Undying Again
by Thanfiction
Summary: What can be made from what's left of two hearts? DAYDverse, heavy spoilers for BOTH DAYD and "Sluagh", will not make sense without having first read both.
1. Protecting The Investment

They seemed to think he couldn't hear them, but he could. The Macmillan's voices carried easily through the closed kitchen door to the living room where Seamus sat near the fire, staring evenly into the steadily flickering flames. Susan had lit it for him – his hands and feet in particular were always cold these days, something the Healers said was due to his heart still not up to its old strength after having been punctured – and the little gesture of kindness ached in a way that was almost physical as he listened to the argument.

Of course Ernie's parents didn't want him here. They'd be insane to want him here. Alcoholic, thief, vigilante, serial murderer…the fact that one could technically amend all of those epithets with 'former' didn't make them any nicer. Especially when, in all fairness, 'friend' and 'D.A.' could be granted the same appellation. Still, she seemed to be holding her ground, and whether she won or lost, he was truly beyond caring. He'd already resigned himself to Azkaban, and if this idea of serving his time at the Loch instead proved untenable, he wouldn't fight the more conventional prison.

There wasn't anything left to fight. In so many ways.

Seamus shifted in the old but still comfortable chair, curling his feet beneath him as he rested his head against the winged back. He was tired, so tired, having spent more of the day on his feet than he was properly ready for in the endless series of official proceedings that had surrounded his move from the Ministry holding cell to the farm. His eyes sagged closed, and the thinnest rumble of a chuckle shuddered in the back of his throat.

Fiona was saying he was dangerous. Oh, yes, she was right, or she would have been, not at all so long ago. He'd been an incredibly dangerous man, explosive and violent, not at all to be trusted, but it was blackly funny that she could see any threat in the wreck of a man who had only just barely survived what should have rightfully killed him. What he wished had killed him. What maybe had, even if the Healers had managed to seal the wound of the thick ritual blade itself.

What was alive, anyway, that was the question? It wasn't just a matter of still having a pulse, of still breathing. Fearless Leader's parents had that, and they were far from living. Folk who'd had the Dementor's Kiss weren't exactly counted among the proper living, either. So what about himself? Even the Healers had said it was a miracle he'd survived, because he hadn't fought for it, and that he could be much more recovered if he'd only _try_.

Try for what? For himself? Load of bull, that. Fighter, true, he'd always been, but never for himself, oh, no. He'd fought for his home, for his country, for his people, for his friends, for revenge, for simple _right_, or to see someone evil taken down, but for himself? Didn't they know what a silly paradox they were trying to urge? Fight for yourself when you don't exist beyond the fight for others?

"H'lo."

His eyes snapped open, startled by the matter-of-fact voice that had intruded on his dark musings. A little girl was standing not three feet away, and he heard himself gasp as he recognized who it must be. Oh, sweet Brigid's tears, _Cecily. _

He knew how long it had been, but it was still a shivering shock to see that what he remembered as nothing more than a vague swell under Susan's sweater and a proud smile on Ernie's mouth had become a girl of at least four and a half, her long, dark hair in two braids over the shoulders of her nightdress, her eyes reflecting her father's soft, warm hazel at him in the firelight. She was a pretty little thing, wide-eyed and so innocent that it hurt to remember that there were such naïve creatures in the same world he'd seen so much ugliness of.

There was no fear in her expression, and he held himself motionless, unsure what he was supposed to do or say, not wanting to break this spell and see her shy away as she approached him, tiny, plump fingers reaching out to touch the side of his face. "Pretty."

Seamus blinked, taken aback by the term that he couldn't remember ever having been applied to him, and certainly didn't make sense now, and the response came before he could stop himself. "What's pretty?"

"Ye gots ribbons drawed on yer face. They're pretty." Her hand slid down the line of the tattooed knotwork, then without any warning, she clamored up onto his lap. Seamus stiffened, half from pain as she burrowed unwittingly against the fresh scar on his chest, half from how completely alien it was to have a child respond to him as anything other than a figure of fear. Somewhere in the distant past, he knew he'd had cousins, that he'd been good with Dean's sisters, but her solid, squirming warmth was still bizarre.

But…wonderful.

He shifted carefully, easing her away from the half-healed wound to settle into a more comfortable position, but in doing so, the neck of his prisoner's robes pulled down a bit, and those hazel eyes sparkled in delight as she reached for the newly exposed crosses. "Oooh! Gots more! Like Uncle Charlie! D'ye have dragons?"

"No," he admitted. "Just crosses and names and…ribbons."

"Ye must be Shu…shi…" she frowned, her nose scrunching up as she struggled with the unfamiliar name. "Mister Fi'gim?"

"Shay-miss," he said slowly. "Not so hard, love. Just a bit o' a funny name, but 'tis normal where I'm from. Your mam's told ya I was comin', then?"

"Mmm-hmm," Cecily nodded happily. "She sayed we was gonna have ye come live with us 'cuz ye'd got in troubles and gotted grounded forever, but you're DA, and ye was Da's friend, so I's not to be scared of ye."

"You're also not supposed to be out of bed, young lady." Cecily's mouth dropped open into a startled 'o', and her round cheeks flushed as she turned with him to see Susan standing in the open door of the kitchen. He hadn't heard it open, hadn't even realized the fight had ended, and he felt as guilty as if he'd been caught with a far older girl on his lap in a very different way.

After the initial surprise, Cecily did not seem at all ashamed of herself, and she pouted sternly, propping one fist against her hip. "Wanted ta see Mr. Shay-miss," she enunciated carefully, and he was oddly touched to hear her pronounce it correctly, if a bit stiltedly in her dainty burr. "And I want a milk."

"I said you could see him in the morning, and you've already had your milk." Susan was unmoved by the adorable face her daughter was making, and he could see now that this particular brand of combat was one in which the delicate witch by far had the upper hand on him. He would have melted at once. "Now scoot to bed, or it's no sweeties tomorrow!"

Cecily huffed in deeply wounded indignance, fixing him briefly with a look of unendingly patient suffering and oppression before she hopped off his lap, scurrying out of the room again with one last, filthy glare over her shoulder. Susan watched her go, and it was only after she was long vanished that the smile appeared softly on her mouth as she shook her own dark head. "I'm sorry, Mr. Finnigan. She's a bit of a handful…used to being spoiled awfully by any of the old gang."

"So's I noticed, but she's a charmer, she is. Lovely girl. She's got –" he hesitated, not knowing where old wounds might still bleed. "—a way about her."

"You can say she has Ernie's eyes, Mr. Finnigan," Susan replied, her tone unreadable, the awkwardness of the fight she must have known he'd be able to overhear and the charity that had prompted it palpably heavy in the air between them. "You wouldn't be the first one, I assure you."

There was a silence, and he took a deep breath as he forced himself to meet her eyes directly, bracing for the unknown he might find there, not even sure what it was he didn't want to see. "Ya weren't scared t'be findin' your little angel curled up with the likes o' me?"

"To tell you the truth, Mr. Finnigan, it terrified me," she admitted bluntly, and he felt like she had been slapped in a way he hadn't expected. "I just didn't want Cecily to become frightened…she doesn't know what you've done, and I'm taking care that she doesn't find out, not because I want to spare you her rejection, but because I want to spare my daughter the nightmares I've been having ever since I read those files the Minister gave me to show me exactly what I was accepting into my home."

A spark, pale and fleeting, of the old defiance burned briefly in his tone. "Then why'd ya take me? Why'd ya fight for keepin' me just now, 'specially if I ain't even kept the priviledge o' bein' on a first-name basis with me old friend, _Mrs. Macmillan?"_

"I am a businesswoman," Susan replied coolly. "My late husband left me with a great many investments, two of the most important not being gold at all, but our child and the D.A., both of which he felt were worth his own life. You were a part of the latter – a very important part – and that is why you are not currently in Azkaban, as I think it would be a waste of the man I once knew."

"What o' the man ya know now?"

"I _don't _know you now," she retorted. "Which is why it remains to be seen whether my inadvertent investment here was wise." Susan started to leave, but then she stopped, turning back, and the fire caught her dark eyes with a fierce, almost lupine gold. "But you should know that the price if I am wrong will be one that YOU will pay."

Bottom of Form


	2. Serving Time

It would have been much easier with a wand, but it was locked up somewhere in the Ministry of Magic for the next fourteen years, eleven months, and six days, as he had been guilty of using the magical tool to cause "grievous bodily harm resultant in death." Personally, he thought this was a little absurd. The object that had caused the grievous bodily harm had been a knife, actually – the wand just meant there was a lot less struggle involved and probably had made it fractionally more merciful in the end – and he had one of _those _in his hand right now, perfectly legally. Bureaucracy was mental.

Still, there was nothing he could do about it, and so he continued to root among the straw in the Macmillans' barn, separating out the long, tangled sections of baling twine from the scattered piles and cutting them into usable portions, then bundling those together and laying them neatly aside. It was a boring task, something that except for the cutting part he knew was usually given to Cecily, but that, at least, he didn't resent, as he knew that he wasn't capable of much more.

He had just finished tying his most recent cluster of thirty when the rustle of footsteps alerted him that he was no longer alone, but he didn't bother to look up. "Nearmost done, I am, Duncan. One more, maybe two still –"

"Not planning to do anything nefarious with all that rope, are you, Finnigan?"

Seamus startled at the unexpected voice – not Duncan at all, nor any of the other farmhands, but Anthony Goldstein – and his mouth twisted into a bitter mimicry of his former wit, his eyes shuttering instantly. "Thinkin' o' takin' up knittin', so I've been. That acceptable, Auror, or be there a problem with me havin' the pointy things?" He spun the knife in a way that he knew was not quite threatening, but he still expected a flinch, a flicker of fear, _something_ from the demonstrated ease.

But Anthony didn't flinch. Not in the slightest. Instead, the young Auror actually laughed. "Oh, maybe a little coarse for a jumper, if you're planning to use that, but I don't see a problem with it." He motioned casually to a nearby bale. "Mind if I sit? It's my last stop for the day, and I don't want to go home limping. Li would worry."

"Sure…" Seamus responded, a little confused at the other man's completely relaxed attitude, as well as surprised to see that Anthony was indeed distinctly limping as he crossed to the bale and sat down. "Ain't ya here to check on me, though? Official business?"

Anthony looked up, raising one dark eyebrow. "Killed anyone?"

"No."

"Planning to kill anyone?"

"No."

"There. Official business done. It's just a formality, really. We all know if you were going to blow it, we wouldn't know until after, and we wouldn't have to ask. You've never been subtle." He had bent over, rucking up the cuffs of his trousers, and he winced as he rubbed at his calf, unable to suppress a low groan that made Seamus tilt his head in sympathetic curiosity.

"Never quite heal, then?"

"You could say that." Anthony raised his head, an odd little grin on his face, then he sat up straight, and Seamus startled to see that he was holding not just the shoe that he had seemed to be removing, but his entire lower leg. There was a rather boyish laugh at the reaction, and he sat the prosthesis on the bale beside him as he bent over again to the other. "Both had to go, actually. Pulped. But I'm pretty good on these now…most people don't even know I'm about fifteen inches shorter than I used to be unless I go too long on my feet and wind up like this." He motioned at the reddened, inflamed stumps with his wand, sighing in obvious relief as they immediately began to go down, the angry look fading to nothing worse than two neat scars.

"I'm…sorry," Seamus offered awkwardly. "I didn't know."

Anthony shrugged dismissively, letting his trousers fall limply over the foreshortened limbs as he leaned back on his elbows to regard Seamus with a strangely unreadable expression. "How about you? Pardon me saying so, but you look like shit."

"Got stabbed in the heart. Takes a man off his best, it does." His tone refuted any further discussion of the topic, but Anthony pressed on, not at all dissuaded.

"You should be almost fully recovered by now. Susan says you're still hardly eating, that you barely speak to anyone except Cecily, spend most of the time sitting in your room or staring off into space. For a guy that couldn't be shut up with the Cruciatus, that's a little alarming."

"Alarmin' or not, ain't your business, Auror," Seamus said coldly, turning away to fish for more twine among the straw.

"I don't know," Anthony replied quietly, "I think inmates should stick together."

Now Seamus stopped, frowning as he looked back at the other wizard. "Inmates? Didn't think they let folk what were servin' time have wands, much less be Aurors, or were I just so batshit they reckon me a special case?"

"There's more ways to be condemned than by the Wizengamot." Anthony plucked at his robes, displaying the patch at his chest with the crossed and sparking wands that marked him among the elite Enforcer's unit. "This is my sentence. Two more years to go."

"And what's your crime?" Seamus asked sarcastically.

"Murder. Same as yours." He spoke matter-of-factly, but the guilt was clear in his dark eyes. "And I don't mean Death Eaters. I was trying to get Geoff out of the line of fire when that wall came down. Panicked, dropped him and tried to run. He was hurt pretty bad, don't know if he'd have lived anyway, or if we'd have both been trapped, but I abandoned a fourteen year-old kid to save my own skin, and a few years of living dangerously isn't going to undo the look on his face as he was buried."

There was no reply to the confession, he didn't even know if there was supposed to be one, but Anthony didn't seem to expect an answer as he went on, his eyes never leaving Seamus'. "There were a lot more than the three Unforgivables that night, and you're not the only one in a prison without bars. Neville, Zach, Ron, Harry…we all went with the Aurors for ours, but everyone does it their own way. Susan has her Fund. You…well, I think you might have been the most dramatic, but that was always your style. Still, I thought it might be worth something to know you're not alone in this."

Seamus gave a snort that wasn't quite a laugh. "I'd thank ya for the tea and sympathy, but there weren't none o' the former, and I don't be needin' the latter."

"No, I don't suppose you think you do." Anthony sighed, then bent again to begin strapping his legs back into place. "But you were a Gryffindor once, and maybe, since you're going to be here every day for a considerable while, you might remember that chivalrous streak and be willing to see if you can do something for Sue after everything she's done for us."

The request made little sense, and Seamus shook his head, motioning back towards the farmhouse with the hilt of the knife. "She don't need nothin' from me."

"She needs a _friend_," Anthony insisted. "She's been running the Fund, she's been a great mother to Cecily, but she's practically cloistered herself up here, even keeping Hannah at arm's length. As it is, for all she hates herself for what he gave, Ernie's sacrifice bought her a life in name only. I thought…" He trailed off, busying himself with a few last adjustments, then shrugged as he stood carefully. "Well, heaven knows I'm not trying to be a yenta, I don't mean trying to make her forget him like _that_, but I thought maybe…it's big and it's quiet up here. People could talk, talk about anything, and no one would ever have to know."

His suggestion stood between them like a physical thing, and to his own disbelief, Seamus found himself nodding, a strange, vague hunger arising in him at the possibility of having a task that wasn't busywork, even a way to atone that wasn't just days on the calendar. He knew that he was himself a lost cause, whatever might have been worth salvaging long destroyed, but Susan was something else entirely. If he could do anything to help someone truly worth it…. "What should ya be wantin' me to do?"

"What none of the rest of us can," Anthony smiled, tucking his wand into his belt as he started towards the door. "Be here."

He chuckled despite himself. "Ain't no worry o' me leavin', there ain't."

"No." One hand was already on the heavy wooden handle of the door, but Anthony paused, turning back, and his voice was firm. "If you want to be there for her, I mean you have to _be here_ first, and you're still at Hogwarts. As someone else who still spends a lot of time there, I don't think you ever left." A smile as hard as fallen stone cracked over his mouth. "But you were Gryffindor. You're supposed to be braver than me."


	3. Guises

It was disturbingly like preparing for a strike. The ones he had targeted had been far too street-savvy to merely follow a stranger into a secluded location, so he had learned to earn their trust. While Seamus knew he lacked the kind of intelligence that scored well on tests, he did possess a remarkable amount of raw cunning when the need presented itself, and he had presented himself to his victims in a hundred guises, approaching each one from angles carefully chosen so that eventually, it was always they who came to him.

If he were going to get close to Susan, he knew he needed first to earn back her trust in him, and so he had forced himself to begin working towards actual recovery, refusing to allow himself the easy shadows of his room in favor of increasing labors in the broad, sunlit fields of the farm, swallowing the hearty meals that he still didn't really feel any hunger for, separating body from heart as he had long learned and demanding the former back to the illusion of health. To his own surprise, the results showed quickly, the initial horrific crimson that resulted from a sheltered Irish complexion being re-exposed to sunlight having peeled away to the beginnings of a proper tan beneath the freckles, his face and body no longer quite so gaunt in the mirror's pragmatic reflection.

But the real key, of course, was Cecily. Everyone had a weak spot, a shortcut to their most tenderly kept secrets, and Susan's scurried around the farm every day in a tiny whirlwind of dark pigtails and eager babble. It was still strange to have a child take to him so easily, but he hid any sign of discomfort as he set out to win her affections with a determination no grown witch had ever elicited.

As the days, then weeks past, he knew that "Mr. Seamus" was quickly becoming her favorite, and if he had been willing to admit it to himself, he was coming to find her more than an equal delight. Her boundless energy and untarnished innocence was like the touch of water on things he never knew parched as he shared his own childhood fairy tales in the sing-song cadences of the brogue she found so fascinating, let her trace her fingers over her own last name in its cross on his right shoulder, knelt after dinner to play the nameless games with dolls and blocks, even, as his strength began to return enough to allow it, swept her high in gales of ringing laughter to the jigs and reels that came over the wireless and were close enough to his native airs that his feet could follow well enough for a four year-old's satisfaction.

Summer soon came in all the heat that was so astonishing after the bitter chill of the spring nights, and the fire was no longer lit in the evenings, but the braided rug had become their customary place for games before the little girl's bedtime, and tonight she had brought a handful of bright ribbons and a brush, announcing cheerily that he was to do her hair. Seamus hadn't hesitated, bowing deeply. "'How d'ya want it?"

"Fancy braid," she declared after a moment's consideration. "Like Mummy does."

Susan winced, opening her mouth to try and suggest something else, but he nodded agreeably, already running the brush gently over the glossy waves to separate out the first sections. "Ribbons worked in, or tied 'round the outside?"

"Dunno," Cecily shrugged. "Pretty."

"Aye, _Banphrionsa." _She didn't squirm as much as he had expected, and it only took a few moments of uncertainty with the change of angle before his fingers were speeding confidently to weave a tight, intricate braid, incorporating the ribbons in a relatively simple but impressive-looking – and he hoped, suitably 'pretty' knotwork pattern throughout. He could feel Susan's gaze on him as she leaned forward in her chair, but he carefully showed no sign that he had noticed the change until she couldn't contain herself any longer.

"_Where_ in Merlin's name did you _learn_ that, Mr. Finnigan?"

He shrugged lightly, his hands never pausing. "Nothin' like yours, but had long enough hair meself for a while, I did. 'Bout halfway down me back, and while I didn't go puttin' ribbons in it, there were times I couldn't afford none gettin' out, and puttin' the knotwork through it with a bit o' blue or silver cord were somethin' done for…" now he did hesitate, wondering how to explain the fashion of bronze-age Celtic warriors without coming off even more barking than they already thought him. "…special occasions."

Susan seemed to understand his implication, but Cecily herself had no compunction about twisting to fix him with a befuddled scowl. "Why'd ye have long hair? Long hair's for _lassies. _'Cept Uncle Bill. And ye's not Uncle Bill._"_

"True that," Seamus chuckled, "but it were…sorta a bit o' a costume, ya might say. I were makin' meself look like somethin' out o' the old stories, same's why I drew on me face."

The scowl had vanished t a look of fascinated curiosity. "Is that when ye was the Sluagh?"

Susan sucked in a quick breath, and he could hear her stiffen abruptly, but he didn't look up from the child's hazel eyes. "Now where did ya hear that word?"

"The hands," she answered breezily. "They said ye used to be a Slaugh, and ye fucked people up. What does that mean?"

"Cecily!" Susan yelped. "'Fucked' is _not_ a word we say in this house!"

"Sorry, Mummy," Cecily amended quickly, blushing. "But I wants to _know_."

"Your Mam's right," Seamus replied carefully, "'tis a very naughty word, but 'tis fair's well for ya be wantin' to know. Ya know about the war, do ya? 'Gainst Riddle, afore ya were born?"

"Mmm-hmm," she nodded sagely. "Da died makin' him go 'way. He was a bad, bad man, but he's gone forever now."

"That he is. But a lot o' other folk 'sides your Da died stoppin' him, and a lot o' folk were hurt, some outside, and some in their hearts." And now it was Susan's horrified stare that he met, and he felt the familiar mix of thrill and fear as he knew exactly how thin the line was that he would have to walk. "I were hurt in me heart, real proper bad, because me best friend got killed, and I thought it should've been me, because I liked him more than I liked meself and I wanted to trade."

"I wanted Teddy's Kneazle," Cecily reached back to pat his hand in all the very real sympathy she could know. "Said he could have a Demiguise 'stead, but ye can't always trade. 'S bad."

"It was very bad," he agreed. "So when I found out there was another bad man, I wanted to stop him _before_ he hurt people, and he liked to play like the old stories, so I had to do the same thing. A Slaugh…." Seamus hesitated, searching desperately for how to phrase the dark and complicated concept. "It's a kind of soldier, and sometimes soldiers have to do bad things, and that's what they meant by the naughty word. That I did bad things."

"'S that what gots ye in troubles?"

"Aye, 'tis. Because I broke lots of rules, and I kind of forgot that I was supposed to be playin' fancy dress, and I let myself sort o' turn into a Slaugh some." He glanced down at her rapt face, smiling slightly. "Like when a certain wee miss forgets she ain't true a princess and talks smart t'her Mam."

Cecily winced knowingly, then tilted her head, pointing to his head. "Slaugh's gots the long hair?"

"They do," Seamus tied off the end of her braid, then ran his fingers ruefully through his own short sandy hair. "But ain't just them. It sorta wound up different in the end, 'cause by the time I did stop him, I weren't tryin' to be that no more, but it still meant the old stories, and a lot o' the things I love the most 'bout where I come from."

"Then why'd ye cut it off?"

"When I were in trouble," he explained gently, "they said I ought cut it because it'd look more like how I were before, and they didn't want folk thinkin' 'bout what I'd done after – the bad bits, that is - but I'm gonna be lettin' it come back, I am."

Her eyes widened eagerly, and she sat up straighter, pulling the braid over her shoulder to squeal gleefully at the bright colors before looking to him again, her smile gleaming in the candlelight. "Can ye show me how t'do _your _hair when ye gots it long again?"

Susan smothered a giggle behind her hand, and Seamus was surprised to feel himself blush as he nodded, helplessly aware of what he'd inadvertently trapped himself into. "'Course ya may, _Banphrionsa."_

"Gonna show Papa!" Cecily hopped to her feet, scurrying off in blissful obliviousness with the end of her fancy new braid clutched tightly in one fist, and the sitting room door banged shut behind her with what seemed like far more force and weight than one small child should have been capable of as the two adults were left in the silence of her wake.

He didn't dare make the first move, and it seemed unbearable ages before Susan took a deep breath, getting out of her chair to sit next to him on the rug. "You handled that very well."

"Thank ya."

Silence again, another eternity and a half, and there was something new now behind the cool shield of formality that those dark eyes had held since his first night there. He couldn't yet identify what it was, though, and he had no choice but to wait, hardly daring to breathe as she looked away, fidgeting now with the skirt of her robes. "I'm sorry if I've been a hag to you. It's not fair after I'm the one who insisted on having you here, but those files the Minister showed me…I wasn't exaggerating about the nightmares, Mr. Finnigan. How could you…?"

She trailed off, shaking her head, but there was no need to finish, and there was no delay in his reply. "Because the last time, good men died because the monster wasn't stopped soon enough, and I was fool enough to think that if one man were willin' to meet evil with evil same, it could end it quick."

"But it didn't." Her voice was almost a whisper. "According to Neville, at least…just _reading_ about Druim Cett…but what you did…what you were willing to…." One small, white hand motioned towards his chest, and he nodded, touching his shirt where she had indicated above the blade's heavy scar.

"Dyin' ain't the hard part, Susan." He took a deep breath, and for the first time, he allowed his own shields to drop over what hadn't begun to heal at all. "It's tryin' to figure out why I keep bein' chosen to _live."_

She dropped the eye contact almost at once, and there was a false conversationality to her voice as she tried poorly to pretend that they were still just talking about him. "I don't think we can ever know that."

"Fair." He let it drop, not pushing too much, not too soon, but he was surprised when she moved closer, having expected her to make an excuse to leave, not draw her wand, reaching for him with a strange expression in her eyes that froze him as surely as a hex. The tip of the pearwood caressed his hairline, he felt the shiver of a spell, and then something brushed ever so gently against his neck and shoulders as she drew back.

"You're right," she whispered. "It suits you…but Solicitor's theories to the side, it's…."

He reached up in quiet shock, feeling the long, straight strands that he had thought would take years to properly return. "It ain't the boy ya knew."

"No…" She hesitated, then very deliberately extended her hand to him. "But I think I should probably get to know you, especially since I think you've already won over someone who happens to be rather dear to me…I'm Susan Macmillan."

He laughed, shaking her hand as firmly as he dared. "Seamus Finnigan."

The smile widened, still painted in ghosts but more genuine than he had yet seen from the stranger he had known since he was eleven years old. "Nice to meet you, Seamus."


	4. Counting Sheep

Cotton. Linen. Leather. Silk, if he could afford it. Muggle synthetics, even. But not wool. Seamus did not even bother to restrain the groan that seeped from his lips as he slid stiffly down the wall inside the front door of the farmhouse, trying in vain to fumble loose the caked and frozen laces of his boots. Once he was a free man, he would never wear wool again. Just to spite the little buggers.

As the summer had passed, he had foolishly started to become almost fond of the animals that filled the hills, even feeling excited when some of the skittish Demiguise began to be visible in his presence, but right now, it was a very good thing that he had seen none of them and been under supervision while with the sheep. There would have been mutton.

Oh, he knew perfectly well that the fault did not stand with the animals themselves, but they were a far more convenient target than the intangible forces of weather. An unseasonably early blizzard had swept the Loch, and Seamus, along with every other able-bodied man available, had been working around the clock desperately for…how long now? He didn't actually know. At least two nights since he'd slept, and that had been only a few hours, still with his coat on. He was indescribably filthy from head to toe, he knew that he must reek of mud and manure and who knew what else, and oh, mother of mercy, he was _sore_ in places and ways that even Cuchulainn's brutal warrior's training had never managed to find.

He would have gladly accepted another ten, twenty, even a life's sentence in return for a hot bath and a warm bed – preferably with uninterrupted sleep for at least three days or so – but right now, he couldn't even get his boots off. Seamus stared at them, fully aware that he was capable of enough magic even without a wand to manage it if he called on some of the Gaelic spells he had learned, but even that seemed like effort. Effort took, well, _effort_. Maybe sleeping right here would be fine, oh yes…the wall wasn't really _that _hard….

"Mr. Finnigan? Are ye all right, there?" Fiona's voice startled him back from what had actually come quite close to the edge of sleep, and he blinked rapidly, staring up at her concerned face as if he'd never seen her before in his life.

He had intended to try and brush it off, assure her that he was fine, just resting his eyes, but as had so often been the case throughout his life, what came out of his mouth was the unvarnished truth. "I bloody hate sheep."

"Poor dear," she smiled gently, waving her wand as she knelt to untie the stubborn laces and slip his boots easily from his feet. The thickly knit socks beneath were equally crusted, and they retained the shape of the boots down to the lines of stitching in the leather, making him wince at the sight. Whenever his feet warmed up enough to feel, it probably wouldn't be good. "Duncan says ye worked as hard as any two of his. Up t'yer eyes tae muckle aud drifts and nae a complaint."

"No problem, it weren't," Seamus said dryly, then raised one hand heavily to motion at her wand. "Now would a darlin' ya be and just kill me now, afore the numbness wears full off?"

Fiona chuckled, but there was something else in her expression, a worry beneath the woman's own exhaustion that prickled through the increasing ache. "Would ye forgive if I asked one more thing of ye by the first?"

He sighed, looking forlornly at the boots. "More sheep?"

"Susan."

Seamus sat abruptly fully upright, shaking his head harshly as everything else fell away in sudden worry at the somber way she had said his friend's name. "She all right? It ain't Cecily, is –"

"Oh, the wee lassie's fine," Fiona said quickly. "At the Smiths, actually. Zach sent an owl yesterday saying his bairns'd taken to Dragon Pox, and he's having a party of a kind tae spread it while they're young. He's even said he'll keep her the week so it won't spread tae the flocks."

"Then…?"

"She's been up long's ye, we've been doing our part too, but now she's gone tae the office an' burying herself in the papers 'stead of the rest she needs, and I thought ye might be able…" She took a deep breath, and there was an almost shameful helplessness in her soft blue-gray eyes. "It was when she took ken of the calendar…Ernie's birthday come two hours ago."

Nodding in dark understanding, Seamus swore under his breath as he accepted her hand to stand again, wincing involuntarily as more muscles than he knew he had moaned their protest at being called to movement. But he pushed it aside, his jaw set in determination. "Thanks for tellin' me, Fiona, I'll try to talk some sense to her."

"Just don't be too hard with her," she advised gently. "Always a bad day, it's been for us all."

He thought of the half-dozen similar dark anniversaries that marked his own private calendar and smiled mirthlessly. "I wish I didn't understand."

OOO

She was at the desk in the study, bowed over the tall heaps of parchment with a quill in hand, still dressed in her own work-stained robes, her hair escaping in limp wisps from its long plait to hang around her pale, drawn face. He watched her a moment, then leaned against the doorframe casually, allowing the weariness to show clearly in his voice as he called across the dimly candlelit room. "Now if you're half's beat as I, what on the green earth could be so important's to have ya anywhere but flat abed?"

Susan never looked up, the quill still moving rapidly between inkwell and parchment. "I'm so behind…it's really unforgivable. I've just got to get these letters out with the morning owls…. Poor Sinead, did you know she lost the baby? They've had her in St. Mungos for months now, but the hormone shifts were too much. It was all deformed, and now she's decided that she doesn't want to go through that again, that she just wants to adopt, but none of the agencies are willing to touch a single mother with partial Lycanthropy, and after losing Felton this spring –"

He cut in, interrupting the litany kindly, but firmly. "Susan…."

"This is what it's _for, _Seamus;" Now she did look up, her dark eyes blazing with a manic ferocity. "Helping people when they're getting stonewalled, when they can't afford to stand up for themselves, and Sinead –"

"Will still be there tomorrow night, which is more can be said for ya if ya keep pushin' yourself like this." He crossed the room to her, slipping the quill from her fingers and dropping it into the inkwell. Up close, he could see just how pale she was, how dark the circles were beneath her eyes, and the source of Fiona's worry was obvious. "Ya look like Death's cold breakfast. Only so many hours a body can go't a stretch. How long ya plan be at it?"

"As long as it takes," She retorted defiantly.

"Or until ya collapse?"

"I'm tougher than I look."

He chuckled despite himself, propping an elbow against the back of the tall desk. "Heard that enough times comin' out me own mouth. Don't need be tellin' me it don't take bein' half-Troll t'have a will o' steel, but I also know how far't can see ya gone afore it finally can't take no more."

Susan crossed her arms, glaring at him in undeterred suspicion. "So why aren't _you_ resting?"

"Because I'm worried o'er me friend."

"That's sweet of you," she smiled tiredly, then reached for the quill again. "But I really do need to do this. It's just…"

Again he took it from her, this time pushing the inkwell to the farthest corner of the desk as he held her eyes steadily with his. "Somethin' so ya don't have to go to your bed alone without even Cecily tonight o' all nights?"

She stiffened, her mouth dropping open in an instant of clearly caught shock before the mask of feigned ignorance descended. "What do you mean?"

"Twenty-four, he'da been today, or is me count off?" Seamus asked calmly. "And don't go tellin' me that ain't it when I just seen the look in your eyes swearin' it true. Don't mind bein' lied to, but bein' lied to badly pisses me right off, it does. True ya don't want be seein' me angry."

"Or what?" She fired back sarcastically. "You'd –"

"Pick ya up outa that chair, carry ya upstairs to the bed – kickin' and screamin' if hat's how ya want it - and hold ya down long's it took to sleep with ya." There was no threat to the statement, just a calmly matter-of-fact certainty, but she gaped at him in as much horror as if he'd just described in cool detail the particulars of her own intended murder.

"You –"

Suddenly, Seamus realized too late how his words had seemed to her, and he sighed, rubbing at his forehead in frustration. "Oh, feckin…I'm sorry. Beat I am, no denyin', and ain't best at thinkin' o' what I'm sayin' when I ain't. I didn't mean…." He sighed, looking up at her to begin again. "Look, Susan, I've gone low in me life, I have, done some wicked things, no mistake, but rape's never been and never will be somethin' I'd stoop to. Meant only what I said, no more. But even if I don't need put ya to it by force, offer still stands to share the bed. Empty sluts they were, sure, but there were nights enough I only got through by bein' able to reach out and feel another human breathin' there when seemed I were whole alone in the world."

He had spoken in what he hoped was completely transparent honesty, and to his relief, the fear vanished from her face in a faint smile, though the stubborn resolve remained beneath. "You're a good friend, Seamus, and I'm starting to think a better man than you give yourself credit for, but I'm sorry, I just couldn't. Don't take it the wrong way, you're not unattractive, but –"

He rolled his eyes, smirking. "And you're downright lovely, if that mattered any, but even if I'd energy for't – which I don't – I ain't the sort be seducin' a widow on her husband's birthday. Just wrong, that." Even the black humor was discarded now, and he stepped around behind her chair, resting one hand gently on her shoulder. "No, just offerin' a sort o' breathin' teddy, I am, clothes on and all. I'll even help ya with the business with Sinead tomorrow when's we can both see straight."

There was a long, uncertain pause, then she turned her head, planting a light, sisterly kiss on his wrist as she smiled up at him, no longer attempting to hide her equal exhaustion. "In that case, Seamus, I think I'd be happy to sleep with you…on two conditions."

"What'd those be?"

She made a face, gesturing at his muck-spattered clothing. "I Scourgify you within an inch of your life. You _reek_."

"Fair," He grinned. "The other?"

"Down here, on the couch. Otherwise, I'm not going to be the only one to misunderstand your motives."

He looked where she had pointed, and as he considered the broad, overstuffed sofa with its piles of warmly knitted afghans, he could feel something that with a few weeks of sleep could almost have passed for his old, cheeky grin spread across his face. "Now that, darlin', be the best idea you've had all blessed night."

"Why's that?"

"Because," Seamus sighed almost sensuously, "it means I don't have to drag me sorry arse up no stairs."


	5. Irreplacable

As long as he could remember, Seamus' life had been volatile. It had always been a struggle, a tempestuous and uncertain battle against _something _to see the end of each day, and never the ability to more than vaguely predict what the next would bring. He had thrived on the chaos, in his own way, sinking his teeth into the challenge and drawing his strength from what tore him apart little by little, able to tolerate steadiness only when it was the nothing blur of drunken oblivion that wasn't life at all.

When he had first been imprisoned, it had been the rote _sameness_ that had driven him into the uncushioned depression, and only the offer of another fight in attaining Susan's friendship had begun to draw him out at all. He didn't know if it had been Anthony's true intention, a kindly underhanded trick of sorts, but the friendship had long since become something real, and in the necessary emergence it had taken, he had changed in ways he had never expected of himself.

Azkaban would have killed him, that much he knew for certain now. Whether he had merely given up and let the weakness of his wounds slide into an irreversible decline, or if he'd simply drifted into the path of an old enemy without resistance, he'd never have made six months, but here he was at almost a full year gone, and he wasn't merely still alive. There was always something to do at the Loch, more than challenge enough in nature herself to keep him on his toes, and the Fund to help with besides if it all became too grindingly manual, but there was still rhythm, still routine to the ebb and flow of the flocks and seasons, his evenings with Susan and Cecily, the visits of friends he'd once written off.

His mother had even come for Christmas, and it was that which had first made it real that something was different, the praise of Fearless Leader and the other DA too easy to write off as platitudes. Mam had never been given to those, the bluntness he was notorious for having been inherited directly from her, and she had still burst into tears when he had greeted her at the door. It had frightened him, the frantic way she ran her hands over him, pulled open his shirt to unceremoniously examine the scar on his chest, but it was faded to pale pink against a body that was sturdy and strong, and she had taken his face in her hands, fingertips skimming high on his cheeks and a gasping smile on her lips as she'd stared deep into his eyes. "_There_ ya are," she'd whispered, "_there's _the man I've been prayin' to see since ya were a boy."

He still didn't know for sure what she'd seen or not seen there, but he knew that he felt different; calmer, his temper under easier control, less _driven_, though no less alive. That new control was something that he was having put to the test now, because the lambing and pupping season had arrived, and the surge of extra help brought in from surrounding counties meant more than just unfamiliar faces.

To them, he was a sideshow curiosity and a figure of scorn; small and long-haired, tattooed and foreign among the tight-knit families of Scotsmen who all looked as if they could be – and likely were – in some way relations of Ernie's. War hero turned serial killer, there only by the incomprehensible charity of their friend's English widow, they shared the rumors about him as if he weren't even standing there, as if he hadn't come to be familiar with the Highland slang, but what infuriated him most was how they talked about Susan.

Rich and beautiful, almost six years widowed, they all assumed that she would not only remarry eventually, but that it was only a question of which of them would 'win' her. Were they not all just as pure-blooded, just as Scots, just as broadly built, just as good with the land and the farm as Ernie had been? And she was still more than young enough to have many more children, the girl that Seamus had come to feel as protective of as if she were his own family barely mentioned in their plans.

It all became too much one day when her visit to the barn to fetch a runt pup for hand-rearing had resulted in the 'casual' loss of a half-dozen shirts, and he had lurked in the shadows outside the door to grab her arm as she left, wincing guiltily as he saw her flinch under the grip that anger had made tighter than he intended. "I'd have a word with ya!"

She frowned, the little pup squirming in his blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms as she glanced first into the barn, then back to his flushed and blazing face before stepping aside to join him, her own voice lowered to match his surreptitious hiss. "What's going on, Seamus? You look like you're going to strangle someone."

"Lucky they'll be if that's all I do." He glowered towards the half-open door, tapping the handle of the utility knife at his belt. "Want ya keep Cecily away from us lads next few days. Like's not there'll be a donny down, and I don't want her hearin' the sort o' thing I intend to say, nor seein' if I show them a bit o' what they fancy me famous for."

Her mouth dropped open, and she looked as if only her arms being full prevented him from receiving a swift swat upside the head as she leaned in close, eyes sparking furiously. "_Are you out of your mind_?!"

"Not so much any more," he replied, the smooth steadiness to his voice making it quite clear that the matter was no joke or rash outburst as he continued darkly. "But that's thanks to ya and Cecily, and I ain't seein' those bastards talk o' claimin' and breedin' ya like a prize bloody ewe! Think they can just flex at ya and you'll fall swoonin' at their feet!"

Susan's reaction was not at all what he'd expected. Rather than horror, disgust, even innocent surprise, her dark head tilted, one brow raising in what looked like bemused fascination as she actually _smirked_ at him. He had never seen that look on her face before, and he wasn't sure what it meant, or why he found it almost as endearing as Cecily's sunniest smiles. "Why, Seamus Finnigan, are you jealous?"

"Not half!" Seamus made a harsh, scornful noise, waving his hand at the barn again. "If ya were wantin' one o' them, that's your business, and I'm far from bein' the type o' man be good for ya anyways – I'm more o' the 'what were his name again' the mornin' after than 'better or worse,' I am – but I ain't seein' ya hurt again, and I ain't so far from the shadows I couldn't step right back if need."

The smirk vanished, and now her expression was solemnly tender as she shifted the pup in her hold, reaching out to cup his chin in her softly gloved palm. "That means a lot to me, it really does, but I'm _not _going to get hurt again."

"Those – "

"Despite what they think - despite what _Fiona _thinks, and she's tried to set me up with most of these young men already – they've got it all wrong."

Seamus frowned, not sure whether he was more surprised to find _those _were the source of Susan's complaints about her mother-in-law's matchmaking tendencies, or by the strange quality to the relief he felt in her determined rejection. "I don't reckon ya."

"Ernie and I may only have been together a little while," she smiled sadly, "but I fell in love with him when I was twelve years old and he helped me save a rabbit that had been attacked by Mrs. Norris. I fell in love with his _heart_; with the part of him that held those doors, that walked the common room for hours cradling second-years in his arms and rocking them like toddlers after they'd had their first Cruciatus, that loved deeply enough to call on the raw roots of magic to cheat death itself. _That_ was my husband, not his biceps, not his burr, not a few acres of real estate in the Highlands. And _that _can't be replaced."

He nodded quietly in too much understanding of the loss still fresh in her words, wrapping an arm around her slim shoulders with a gentle squeeze. "No, that it can't. One o' the best men I've ever known, he were, and I ain't just sayin' that, neither."

"I know you aren't." She paused, and the smile deepened as her dark ees came up t meet his. "And I know you won't believe me when I say that he respected you just as much."

"Yeah, well," he shrugged, "that were then."

For a moment, she looked about to argue him, then she just shook her head almost imperceptibly, and her face became completely somber again. "Just promise me that if it starts getting to you, you'll step aside before you do anything stupid? I don't want you going to Azkaban."

"Nah;" He cast her a wink and a smirk of his own. "Knowin' 'zactly how much they're pissin' in the wind just makes it funny now, it do. I'll be fine."

"I meant it, there's nothing for you to worry about," She pressed, raising her hand between them to display the rings she still wore. "I'm still very much a married woman."

Seamus nodded again, and she stepped away now, turning towards the farmhouse and starting to leave again before she stopped, looking back curiously. "Oh, one more thing…Seamus?"

"Aye?"

"I wanted to ask…" She hesitated, and her expression was something rather like embarrassment tinted heavily over amusement. "Have you been working with Cecily on her reading?"

"'Course I have," he replied immediately.

"Teaching her what letters make what sounds?"

Seamus frowned. "How else'd ya go about it?"

"I thought so." The odd little smile was wider now, the amusement sparkling more vividly on her pretty mouth, and he crossed his arms in growing suspicion at the unusual sight of Susan Macmillan looking what he would swear was mischievous.

"Somethin' wrong?"

"Not at all, she's coming along wonderfully…" She chuckled, crossing the few steps back to him to tap him lightly on the chest with one finger. "But I couldn't help but notice that when she decided to read me 'Little Dragon's Big Day' this morning, my Anglo-Scots daughter became rather abruptly Irish."

He blinked, startled. "I -"

"No, it's sweet," she laughed. "You know, I'd never realized how thick your accent actually is. It didn't seem that broad at Hogwarts."

"I were spendin' all me time with Dean, I were," he shrugged. "And there weren't a dozen o' us Paddys in t'whole school. Put me five years deep in Erin's belly, though, and another ten where I never spoke but the pure Gaelic…ah, but what'dya do?"

The teasingly reproachful finger became a hand pressed firm and flat against his heart, and her voice had softened, the friendship that still sometimes caught him off guard in its simple, priceless affection rich in her eyes. "You keep being so good to Cecily, and however deep its brogue, you watch that sharp Irish tongue around the hired help. I don't want trouble."

He took her hand, bowing to kiss it in a deliberately overdone gesture of chivalry. "I can take care o' meself."

Her brows lifted, and she looked at him archly, and again there was that trace of a smirk that didn't look as out of place as it should on the witch who seemed to always carry such a veil of sober responsibility, even in her joys. "I didn't mean you. We need the workmen."


	6. Falling

"Seamus, if anything happens, you can get me on the Galleon, just use Robbie's wand. The Macmillans and I should be back by tomorrow, there's plenty of food in the kitchen, I know you can cook without magic, but Robbie, you're _absolutely forbidden _from making anything. Cecily, love, you're the lady of the house tonight, don't let the boys make too much mess. Is that everything?" Susan paused, running her hands over her traveling cloak in a rapid flutter as she glanced around the front hall of the farmhouse, her cheeks flushed. "Oh, I'm sure I've forgotten – if you ever told me I'd be invited to _Draco Malfoy's _wedding, much less that I'd _go –" _

Seamus caught Duncan's eye in a look of shared amusement, then sighed, reaching out to take her slender shoulders in both hands, stilling the frantic whirlwind of activity into a startled, wide-eyed stare as he smiled at her. "Hesh, there. Price o' the fine circles ya travel, 'tis."

"They're not what I consider fine society," she grimaced, shaking him off to smooth the cloak again where his hands had rumpled it.

"Nah," he allowed calmly, "but they're rich, they are, and bendin' over thrice backwards to be model citizens again, so best ya play nice. Ya know why you're there."

"I know, I know." Susan took a deep breath, pushing back one dark tendril that had escaped from the carefully arranged and elaborate coiled style that had taken her most of the evening as she drew herself up, chin held regally high in determination. "I'm just going to remind myself that making sweet could mean getting Ministry approval for Sally-Anne having properly magical eyes so she can see again and some real research into feminine Lycanthropy."

"And a dozen other things that old owed favors and nasty secrets can buy that money can't," Seamus nodded approvingly, relieved to see that she had pulled atop the jitters at last, then he smiled, tossing her a conspiratorial wink. "Besides, ya can comfort yourself on the most expensive o' that brat's champagne ya can swallow."

"I'm not getting off my guard for one second around him _or _Astoria. I still remember when she Cruciated me, thank you."

"Good." He took a step back, about to say his farewells, then stopped as an idea occurred to him. "But when ya see Malfoy, give him a kiss, will ya?"

Susan frowned, utterly baffled. "A _kiss?"_

"A proper one. Lay it on him good, then tell him it's from Finnigan and watch the look on his face." He felt the smile widen wickedly. "Just trust me."

The smile was returned, her eyes shining, but the confusion was still there beneath, although he hoped not so much that he wouldn't have the privilege of hearing Draco's reaction to the little reminder of his long-ago encounter with Fearless Leader in the Room of Requirement. "Have I ever mentioned that your sanity is not one of the things I always have the deepest faith in?"

He laughed, closing the space between them again to lean forward and place a light, teasing kiss on her cheek. "Have I ever mentioned that there ain't a thing I don't believe ya can do if ya put your mind t'it? Magnificent, you'll be, I'm sure o' it."

"If you say so." The confidence was a little too forced, but he let it go as she shook her head, her brow furrowing as she looked from him to Robbie, the Macmillan's nephew who still lived with them to help run the farm. Seamus had taken on his fair share of the work in the seasons where extra help wasn't needed, but he still could not replace someone raised with the land and the shepherding business. "Okay, boys, you be good. Don't be letting Cecily stay up until all hours. Bedtime's still at nine, Robbie will Apparate her to school tomorrow morning."

She ran her hands over herself again before throwing them high with a frustrated little huff. "Oh, _what _am I forgetting!?"

"Yer handbag, Mum." Cecily's hazel eyes were glittering with barely-suppressed giggles as she withdrew the small satin bag from behind her back, holding it out to her mother.

Sighing deeply in relief, Susan bent to take it, kissing Cecily quickly on the forehead. "Thank you, angel." She stood again, licking her lips as she turned so that both men could see her easily, her fingers going to her throat to release the clasp of the traveling cloak. "Okay, how do I look?"

Cecily's eyes flew huge, and she clapped her hands excitedly, bouncing up onto the tip of her toes as the thick folds fell to the floor, revealing the gown beneath in all its glory. "Ooooh, Mum, pretty, pretty dress! It _sparkles!"_

"Beautiful, Susan, too fair bonny," Robbie agreed, nodding his approval.

"Seamus?" The dark eyes turned to him now, the growing expression of modest flattery fading abruptly to worry. "You…you're not saying anything." Her hand went to her neckline, hovering embarrassed over the exposed cleavage there as her cheeks reddened. "Is it too low-cut? You don't think it makes me look too brazen, do you?"

It did not look brazen at all. No, brazen wasn't the word at all. Brazen implied something dirty, and oh, but he'd never seen anything farther from dirty in his life.

Beautiful, maybe, but that didn't come close either. There were no words, really, for how she looked, for how perfectly the silver fabric skimmed the lines of her body, how the neck dipped just deeply enough to intoxicate without inviting anything more than wishes, how it preserved the daintiness of her body while exhibiting every curve, how it made her fair skin shine like porcelain and her hair and eyes contrast as black as the night itself. He had seen Goddesses in the flesh, lusted after and lain with more women than he could count, but this was something entirely different, and he could no more find words for what he saw than for the sudden, shocking, overwhelming _something_ he felt.

His mouth was dry as it worked helplessly over the absent words, desperately forcing even nonsense to come enough to drive that awful crestfallen look from her lovely face. "Fine. 'Tis fine. It just…I just…ain't…not…'tis different. Aye…different."

Somewhere far away, he could hear Duncan's booming roar of a laugh. "Ye've struck Finnigan speechless, Sue. Better thing I don't 'spose ye could have asked. Now off, else we'll be late."

"Good night, boys." She kissed Robbie on the cheek, and did it burn the other man's flesh like it burned his? But she'd done it before, done it a dozen times, or had she put something on them tonight that made his skin tingle and tighten so much at the light brush? "Come here, Cecily, give Mummy a hug. Good night!"

And Cecily was following her to the door, there was a last wave, and she was gone with the Macmillans, the triple cracks of their Apparation striking the spinning, suddenly mental night like slaps that couldn't snap him out of it.

"Ye all right, Mr. Seamus? Ye look funny." The little girl was looking up at him in concern, and he wanted to tell her it was all right, that it was fine, but he couldn't make his mouth work, and Robbie smirked, letting out a knowing chuckle.

"Mr. Seamus has a problem with his trousers, I fancy. Happens tae grown laddies sometimes, something ye'll be learnin' of when yer bigger." He ruffled her hair, earning a filthy glare as he chucked a thumb towards the kitchen door. "Come, now, lets go get some biscuits, and I'm thinking he'll be having himself a walk in tha cold air, maybe jump in t'Loch a bit."

Cecily frowned, unwilling to be so easily distracted. "Didn't he like Mum's dress?"

"Aye, that he did," Robbie grinned. "But come now, biscuits…."

She allowed him to take her hand, but she looked back over her shoulder hopefully. "Do ye want some, Mr. Seamus? Mum made them this morning."

"Later, love." The smile bent his mouth weakly, then he raised his head to catch Robbie's eye with a far darker glare. "I think I'll be takin' that walk now, but a word with Robbie first, if ya don't mind."

At six, Cecily was still naïve about most things in the world, something that Seamus strove to preserve, but she was no longer so young as to be unable to tell when adults had something going on over her head, and he saw the understanding dawn on her round face as she looked between them, and thankfully, she had inherited her mother's talent for diplomacy. "I'll start tea."

"Good girl, ya do that." Seamus nodded her out of the hall, then he strode forward, bringing himself toe to toe with the other wizard, his voice as hard and razor-edged as any blade. "Robert. John. Campbell."

Robbie grinned again, apparently unaware of the tone that would have made wiser men run for cover. "Coi, she –"

"One word." And now the danger did convey, and Robbie's mouth snapped shut, the fear striking his features so fast and so drastically as to be almost comic. "One word ya say to Cecily, to Duncan, to Fiona, to another livin' soul – Merlin forbid t'Susan -- and it'll be the last thing ya do. Do I make meself perfectly clear, Robbie, me lamb?"

Robbie nodded swiftly, eyes wide. "Aye, sir."

"Good." Seamus made a small, satisfied noise, then turned to grab his own cloak from the hook by the door, not bothering to look back. "Now, ya promised the girl biscuits, ya did. I'll be back soon enough."

The early September air was already chilly and sharp, but it had no effect on the flush in his cheeks or the frantic pounding of his heart, and he struck out into the darkness as if he were being chased, as if he could stride…or jog…or even flat out sprint away from what had happened in the warm, bright haven of what had become his home.

What _had_ happened? His mind was reeling, his senses blurred and swirling against themselves and each other, and it was more disorienting than the strongest drink, the most potent drug or potion, the most profound depths of what until now he had considered the mouth of madness.

It wasn't as if it was the first time he had noticed she was beautiful, of course. He wasn't blind, it wasn't even the first time he had wanted her physically, but he'd never thought anything of that beyond that he was a healthy man out in the middle of nowhere with a lovely woman. It hadn't even bothered him when dreams had brought her to his bed, but this wasn't as simple as lust. Oh, he wished it were!

It was Susan herself. In that moment, that single instant, she had been not merely so beautiful it could steal a man's breath away, but she had been so much more. Vulnerable and wounded, stubborn and strong, mother and businesswoman, a fighter with a healer's heart, his friend who was still half a mystery, his fellow scarred refugee and his saving grace. She was the delicate English rose that should never have been able to thrive on the harsh Highland moors, but thrive she did, thorn and blossom, and in that broken breath, she had captured everything he had come to….

No. Just _no!_

He didn't. He couldn't. He'd never…he just wasn't that kind of man. Nothing to do with being a good person or bad, but for all that they had grown to be the closest of friends through their shared ordeals, he couldn't be more different from Fearless Leader with his wife and his baby twins and his almost sickening domesticity. He was a fighter, a survivor, too hardened and too cynical for anything so floaty or ethereal.

Seamus hadn't had anything like a direction in mind when he'd bolted from the house, but he was strangely unsurprised to find himself in the little graveyard on the crest of the hill that overlooked the compound, standing and staring helplessly down at the marker that still stood fresh and unweathered among the memories of the generations. Slowly, he sank to his knees, placing his hand flat against the silently carved dates that were separated by only eighteen years as his head sagged forward against warm flesh and cold stone.

He was trembling all over, and it wasn't from the chill that he didn't at all feel through the warm cloak, his voice a jagged whisper lost against the eternal cry of the wind. "Is this what it were like for ya, Ernie? Knowin' her and callin' her friend and then it just _hits_ ya, and ain't nothing ya can do no more than if't were _Avada Kedavra? _'Cause I remember the day ya came t'meetin', and somethin'd changed about ya, it were in your eyes, and ya were holdin' her hand and not never same after."

His fist tightened on the edge of the grave, and he could feel droplets of moisture sliding down his wrist, but whether it was sweat or tears or even somehow blood, he didn't know or care. "What's it 'bout her? Is't a spell all witches got? Hannah done it to Fearless Leader, I reckon. But oh, Ernie, me darlin', I'm so proper screwed, for she's yours, she is, still and forever, and I can't be riskin' lettin' her know and drivin' away what were already so many ways the dearest thing I've ever had in me life. Ya don't need be no jealous ghostie hauntin' me 'round, I promise ya, but if ya got a bit o' influence on t'other side, I could be usin' a touch o' mercy t'make this be a passin' thing.

Seamus lifted his head now, looking up in what was more plea than prayer to the empty stars overhead, and for a moment, it was as if he could almost feel the strong hand of the youth long gone against his shoulder in what could equally have been sympathy or rebuke, warning or blessing as his voice cracked against the shameful truth of the confession. "Oh, Ernie, me old, dear friend, I've gone and done a terrible thing, I have. I think I've fallen in love with your wife."


	7. Too Close For Comfort

"Need some help? The witches have kicked me out so they can talk." The blade of the shovel paused, half-buried in the heavy muck of the irrigation ditch, and Seamus cuffed the sweat from his eyes, squinting into the bright August sun as he recognized the familiar soft-spoken Yorkshire of his visitor.

Neville was dressed for a visit, not heavy labor, but Seamus shrugged, bending down to lift a flat-edged spade and toss it over, any further welcome unneeded. "Sure, long's family life ain't gotcha too cush. Always more work for the weary 'round here."

"I think I'm okay," he replied coolly, anchoring the spade in the earth and stripping off his outer robe and the neatly pressed shirt beneath. Even through the undershirt, it was clear that his body was still as hard and strong as when it had been mail, not cotton he had worn, and the scarred face broke into a boyish chuckle at Seamus' look of surprise. "Hannah's been on me that I can relax, but after…well, you know. I don't want to ever be caught having gone soft, especially now that I've got Peggy and Trev."

Neville paused a moment, hopping down into the ditch beside him, and the two wizards resumed the never-ending task of keeping the ditches clear of the clogging, accumulated mire as they talked. "Ever bother you how old we actually _are? _I suppose you could make a case for as old as forty-three."

Seamus considered it a moment, jamming the edge of the shovel beneath a particularly stubborn clod and using his foot to lever beneath. "Usually, I go with what's on me birth certificate. Keeps it easy." It finally came loose, but the sodden mass was heavier than he had expected and poorly balanced, sending a painful stab of protest shot through his body as he flung it over the edge. He made a face, rubbing at the small of his back with deliberately exaggerated agony. "Though at the moment, I'm for the forty-sommat."

"Who's gone soft now?"

"Doin' fine for an old man, I am," he tapped the flat plane of his stomach with the back of his free hand, and Neville dipped his head, laughing as he conceded the point.

For a few more minutes, they worked on in comradely silence, then Neville spoke again, and this time, there was an oddly forced air of casualness to his tone. "So, how are things up here?"

"Fine," Seamus answered carefully.

"Which means you still haven't told her."

So that was it. He scowled, the shovel now jabbing into the thick mud so fiercely that the squelching strikes sounded almost like sounds of protest. "No."

"Seamus, you've been in love with her for over a year." Neville pressed gently, but Seamus shook his head so harshly that a few strands of his ponytail clung to his sweat-slicked face, and he shoved them away, not caring about the streaks of mud he left in their wake.

"Been over this, Fearless Leader," he snapped. "Ain't told her, ain't gonna."

"What if she feels the same way? Have you ever considered that?"

He didn't look up, didn't need to. "If she did, I ain't never been nothin' but single. She'd be welcome to say so."

"She's single, too." Neville caught his eye as he turned, and he never knew if it was maddening or wonderful that nothing had ever been able to fully strip the gentle optimism from that deep brown gaze. "It's been eight years. He's _gone_."

"Ya seen her left hand lately? S'always been how _I _check t'see if a bird's single."

"Still, you should –"

"Matter's closed, Fearless Leader." He flung another shovelful over the edge, but before the silence could grow too uncomfortable, he smiled again, deliberately changing the subject. "I been itchin' t'know, did ya pass your M.A.G.I.s?"

For a moment, it looked like the diversion would be argued, but then Neville nodded with a proud little smile of his own. "Herbology, Charms, Defense Against The Dark Arts."

"Brilliant, mate!" Seamus crowed, clapping his friend on the back in genuine congratulations. "Ya can go for the teachin' cert now?"

"Just Herbology. I've been exchanging owls with Sprout. She's willing to take me on as a teaching assistant starting in a year or two…" He went on eagerly, explaining about their old Professor's intended retirement, his plans for eventually becoming a Professor at Hogwarts, and Seamus listened, honestly glad for the other man's success, even as he was equally grateful that the other matter had been laid to welcome rest. It was something that was hard enough to live with without having to talk about it.

OOO

"Dear Merlin, what were you boys doing, mud wrestling?" They had barely come through the door for dinner when they heard Hannah's horrified exclamation, and Seamus chuckled, looking down ruefully at himself.

"If ya mean were we wrestlin' with mud, I'd say that's fair 'nuff."

Susan had appeared at her friend's side now, and Seamus kept his face carefully neutral as she laughed gently, knowing that Neville would be watching him with the keen eyes of someone who knew him what was at times far too well. "Actually, Hannah, they're reasonably clean."

The small, rounded nose wrinkled as Hannah got close enough to catch a whiff of the sweat that mingled thickly with the mud itself, and she shoved back quickly from her husband's attempts to greet her with a kiss, glancing incredulously at Susan. "You mean…."

"You get used to it," Susan shrugged. "And there are always cleaning spells. _BOOTS_!"

"Sorry!" Neville yelped, leaping back instantly onto the mat, and Seamus shot him an _I-Warned-You _look as he knelt, then looked up again, this time at Hannah. "But I was wondering, dear, have you two had a nice talk?"

"Oh, very." Hannah smiled, and there was something odd and secretive about it that made Seamus instantly suspicious. He looked over at Fearless Leader, but there was nothing there to answer what it was, only a matching little smirk that if anything deepened the mystery. "As a matter of fact," she continued breezily, "I was about to ask the same thing."

"Definitely." There was no mistaking the overdone casualness in Neville's reply. Susan, as well, seemed clearly aware that something was up between the couple, and he shrugged minutely, hoping she would understand that he was no more in on it than she.

"I see. Well, I wonder if it was the same kind of talk?" Hannah turned to the other witch, her green eyes glittering triumphantly. "Susan, wasn't there something that you wanted to tell Seamus?"

The offhanded question dropped like a hex into the quiet hall, and Seamus actually fell back against the wall where he had begun to kneel, his heart clutched frozen in his chest as Susan spun, her eyes huge in what looked like equal parts shock and…guilt?

"_WHAT_!?"

"Might have been, you know? Because there's something Seamus was going to tell Sue." Neville nodded back to his wife as if there had been no outburst, no reaction at all, but his eyes were only on Susan, the shock having settled now into what was unquestionably blind panic for both of them. Oh, sweet Mab, _she knew._ She knew, because that bastard had told his wife, and she had told Sue, and now they were going to try and force it, and he would have to actually hear the awful words that had cut through his certainty so bloodily and so often actually come from those beautiful lips. _I'm sorry. Just friends. I thought you understood. I still love him. I wish you hadn't. Nothing against you, but you're just not…._

His jaw set, and he gathered himself, his hands fisting slowly as he turned to Neville, very real threat growling against the thinner edges of panic beneath his words. "Don't make me kill ya in front o' your wife, Fearless Leader. Dontcha do it."

"There…" Susan's voice was barely audible, a high, breathless gasp, and she took a deep breath, swallowing hard. Her skin was the color of milk. "I mean, is that true, Seamus?"

And there it was, and they were all looking at him, and if there had ever been a moment for him to show true, raw courage, to earn the scarlet and gold he had once worn, this was it.

Except that he wasn't brave, not really, not when the precious few bits of a heart he had salvaged from the wreckage of his life was on the line, but there was an oddly inspired kind of genius that came from true panic, and he blessed the quick tongue that had so often gotten him in so much trouble as he shrugged, grinning with every inch of easy charm he had ever possessed. "Oh, aye, true enough, though it weren't somethin' I were plannin' to say straight off."

Susan still looked like she was about to faint, but now there was confusion there as well at his sudden change. "What…what sort of thing?"

"Goats."

Three mouths fell open, three voices chorusing incredulously, and oh, but it was a beautiful thing, and never had such a debt been owed whatever grand individual had ever brought the gift of blarney to the Emerald Isle. "GOATS?!"

"Goats. Cashmere goats." He pushed the boots aside and stood, tucking his hands into his pockets as he leaned loosely against the closed door. "I've been thinkin', I have, though like's I said, I ain't worked out all the niggledy details, so I weren't gonna say yet, but we've got ourselves a market established for wizardin' textiles, but there's startin' to be some competition from some o' the others what're getting' the hang o' rearin' Demiguise, so we need stay a step ahead, and if the Demiguise're from the Himalayas and workin' so well, what if we make a go o' some Cashmere goats? Same folk buy the high-end Marino'd be chompin' for't, 'specially since we'd cut the import taxes for them."

Susan gave a brittle-edged, manic little laugh, but it was a relief that bordered on tears as she surged forward, filth forgotten as she threw both arms around his neck, kissing his cheek so close to the edge of his lips that for one insane moment, he almost turned his head the fraction that would have been all that was needed to ruin everything. "Seamus, that's brilliant!"

"Susan, you –" Hannah began, but Susan spun away from him, the formerly pale cheeks suddenly flushed as she waved a hand in firm dismissal.

"Oh, there's no need to get into all that. What does it matter, really? I mean, what's good for the farm is good for the farm, _isn't that right?_"

"Absolutely!" Seamus agreed fervently.

"But, Susan –" The look on Hannah's face was something nearly betrayal, but Neville shook his head, stepping forward to take her hand with another deeply private exchange of glances, this one far more serious than the last.

"Don't, Hannah. Just let it go." There was no more levity, only an edge of sadness to his tone, and Hannah nodded back quietly, then sighed, rolling her eyes.

"I just don't --" she began, but Neville cut her off, one side of his mouth twisting into a vaguely bittersweet smile.

"I know Hufflepuff women, and I know that particular Irishman. Maybe we should be patient, it's not our business in the end."

"Well, of course it's not your business," Susan agreed defiantly, and Seamus could have kissed her all over again for the way her eyes shined, promising him that things hadn't been ruined after all as she glanced back at him over her shoulder before turning her look back to their friends again. "It's _Macmillan _Fine Textiles, after all, and patience is quite required. Do you have any idea what a mess it would be if we just waved our wands and summoned a hundred goats?"


	8. Haunted

"…and then we went tae the Potters, and they've a new bairn. He's really cute, Mr. Seamus…not much hair, but he's got bonny green eyes, just like Uncle Harry, and he makes the _sweetest_ wee noises! Got a dumb name, though;" Cecily made a face, rolling her eyes. "_Albus Severus_ Potter."

Seamus nearly choked, swallowing the mouthful of roast quickly to avoid spitting it across the table. "_Severus!" _He looked incredulously to Susan, hoping that it was just a joke, but her chagrined nod confirmed it, and he shook his head. "Lost his mind, has he? Namin' his kid after that _cac ar oineach?_"

"He wasn't there that year –" Susan began, but he cut her off with a skeptical frown.

"And what year _were _they on great terms?!"

"I'm sure he had his reasons," she shrugged, no longer bothering to pretend that it made sense to her either. "It's really not our business what Harry and Ginny want to name their children. Though that reminds me, did you know Bernie and Mandy are having a boy? They asked me what your middle name was, and they've chosen Patrick. It's not quite as jarringly Irish as Seamus for the son of Bernard and Amanda Dunstan, but they'd have both died at Druim Cett without you."

The news was no less of a surprise, though of a far different kind than the Potters deciding to name their second son after their old enemy, and his mouth worked a moment before the appropriate response to such an unexpected compliment finally came. "I'll…I'll send them an owl, I guess. Honored, I am, though 'tis a bit strange."

Cecily was watching him with a very odd look on her face, as if assessing something, but she spoke before he could ask what it was. "Everyone's having babies…can I have one?"

"Some day," Susan smiled gently. "But only when you're a grown witch."

"Nae like that,"Cecily corrected impatiently, "I mean, can I have a brother or sister?"

"Cecily, love, you know enough about where little ones come from…," her mother chuckled. "I can't just order you one by owl post."

"Aye, they come from two people who love each other." She nodded quite reasonably, gesturing with her fork at the two adults. "So I thought ye and Mr. Seamus, mebbe? I'd want it to have his eyes, though. They're prettier than yours, Mum. But it could have your hair, if ye wanted."

Seamus wasn't sure whether he wanted to laugh or cringe, and the question came half in that he wasn't at all sure how innocently it had been asked. She seemed all too aware of exactly what she had said, maybe not the exact mechanics of what would be needed to fulfill her wish, but the first part, the most dangerous part….

Thankfully, Susan intervened before he needed to, her smile a thin, tense line as her graceful fingers tightened on the handle of her fork. "Mr. Seamus and I certainly care about one another a great deal, but that's not the same as the kind of love that babies come from. We're just very, very good friends."

"That's not what Da said."

Seamus heard himself gasp before he could catch it, and he licked his suddenly-dry lips. "What's Duncan been tellin' ya, now?"

"Not Papa…" Cecily sighed, leaning forward to enunciate the word perfectly clearly for these very dense grownups. "_Da_."

Silence hung over the table for almost a full minute, then Susan took a deep breath, her voice edged in ice as she set down her fork and turned to face her daughter sternly. "Cecily, that's not funny. Your father's dead, and I thought you were old enough to properly understand that. You haven't pretended you could see him in a long time."

"I don't so much," she insisted, "but sometimes I still see him when I'm scared or lonely or when I wake up from a nightmare. And sometimes when I'm asleep."

Seamus reached out, taking her little hand between both of his and trying to make her see in his eyes that although he wasn't angry yet, this was very serious nonetheless. "Dreams ain't the same as real life, _Banphrionsa_. Ya know that."

Cecily pulled away, shaking her head furiously, her cheeks flushed with indignation as she looked beseechingly at Susan. "I ain't lying, Mum! I were scared, 'cause ye and Mr. Seamus been acting funnier and funnier with each other, and I thought mebbe he were going tae be leaving us, an' I didnae want it so! He's closest I've ever had tae a Da what's _real_, what's _here, _and Da said I didn't have tae be 'fraid, that ye were just in love, and it'd be all right when ye sorted it out!"

Susan looked closer to losing her temper than Seamus ever remembered seeing, and her hands clenched the tabletop until the knuckles looked about to burst the skin of her fingers, her voice shaking with what sounded like a thousand things beyond and fighting for space in the burning dark eyes with the anger itself. "That's _enough_, Cecily."

"He said ye were both just afraid –"

"That's _ENOUGH_, Cecily!" Her shout cut the girl off mid-sentence, but the two witches still faced each other stubbornly, matching mouths set in equal resolve, but Susan was still the girl's mother, and she stood, jabbing her finger towards the open door. "Go. To. Bed. Now."

Cecily looked like she had been struck, her hazel eyes wide and springing abruptly with tears. "That's nae _FAIR!" _she wailed, but the outraged protest was to no effect.

"You have to the count of three, young lady. One. Two…."

"Yer…yer…" Cecily sputtered, even as she was smart enough to get up from the table, throwing her napkin down on her chair. She stopped at last at the door, turning back, her face twisted in wounded rage. "Yer _mean! _Both of ye!_"_

The door slammed, surprisingly heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs, there was another slam, and only then did Susan turn back to him, and he didn't know why it hurt that her expression was so unreadable. "I'm so sorry, I don't know what –"

"Don't worry 'bout it," he sighed, standing to wrap a comforting arm around her shoulders. "She's just startin' to get to that age where she wants to be like her friends, she does, and that means a Mum and a Stepda's a lot more normal than 'this is me Mum and this is the convict what lives with us.'"

"That may be," Susan insisted, "but that doesn't excuse making up stories about Ernie. I really thought she was past that phase."

"Maybe ya should go talk to her, ya know? If nothin' else, make sure she knows I ain't goin' nowhere at least until she's nineteen."

The dark head shook sadly, and she stepped away, her voice quiet as she looked away to the closed door. "She knows you're eligible for parole at five years."

"I said, I ain't goin' nowhere."

"Seamus, we don't expect…."

"She's Ernie's, I ain't never forgettin' that," he said firmly. "But she's been mine too for three and a half years, and I ain't never gonna walk out on a child. Now go take care o' your daughter. I'll wash up. Not much appetite now, ya know?"

"Me neither. Do you want my wand?"

"I'll do it the Muggle way."

"All right." Her hand went to the doorknob, but then she paused, and when she looked back, her eyes were more frightened, more vulnerable than he had ever seen, though there was no hint of fear in her tone. "We can talk about the other part later."

His own throat was suddenly far too tight to hope to answer, but he nodded, and there was the weak flicker of a smile before she was gone, and he almost flung himself towards the table, gathering up half-filled plates and cups as if he could speed away from what would be coming when she returned. His heart was hammering, his hands numb as he fumbled for the taps, trying desperately not to break anything despite how hard he was shaking. There was no way around it now, he was going to have to…but _how_, and what if, and oh, _please_….

"Seamus…."

The voice was the last he had ever expected to hear, and the plate he was holding fell from his hands, shattering unnoticed against the stone floor as he whirled, feeling every bit of color drain from his face at the sight of the man standing in the center of the kitchen only a few feet away. Except it wasn't a man, not properly. The figure was silver-white, wholly transparent, and although he recognized him instantly – the school uniform, the thickly muscular build, the head of ringlets, the twice-broken nose – his mind refused to accept it so easily, and all that emerged from his mouth was a strangled noise that had tried unsuccessfully to form a name.

Ernie's mouth quirked into the familiar lopsided smile. "I'm sorry, old chum, didn't mean to scare you. I suppose that would mean you can see me, then."

"You're dead!"

"Well, yes."

"But --?!" Seamus stopped himself, not even knowing what it was he had been about to say, but the longer he looked at the ghost of his former friend and comrade, the more surreal it seemed. It was Ernie, no question at all about that, and he was exactly as Seamus remembered him…yet not, and it was more than just the issue of lacking color and substance. Ernie had been one of the oldest in the DA, and memory recalled someone who was a grown man, broad-shouldered and work-weathered, but now that he took a real close look, he seemed so much _younger_, the shade of a boy merely in his late teens, and it was the most disconcerting thing of all to see so much more bluntly than photographs what children they all had been.

"Ghosts don't have a lot of freedom." Ernie shrugged ruefully. "We're bound by the conditions under which we stayed behind…some of us are tied to a place, some of us doomed to keep repeating something forever…I'm just here to watch over Cecily. That's why you haven't been able to see me."

"Then," Seamus asked carefully, grateful to find it at least a little easier to force words past the fading edges of the initial shock. "Why can I see ya now?"

"Because you're not going to believe her otherwise, and I don't want her called a liar unfairly when it's my fault."

The reminder of Cecily's awkward announcement bit keenly, and he steeled himself, realizing now what the real reason for this visitation must be. "Then ya know about Sue, and ya know all o' why I'm stayin', but I swear, Ernie, there ain't no need be tellin' me to keep me hands to meself."

"Actually, I was rather going to ask you quite the opposite."

Seamus frowned as if Ernie had just started speaking in fluent Japanese. "I don't reckon ya."

"I didn't give my life so that she could bury herself with me. She's only twenty-six, Seamus, but I've been dead now longer than she ever even knew me." The look in his eyes was painful in a way that no one ever should have had to see, the bittersweet grief for his own surrendered life. "It's time for her to let go, and if we couldn't have each other for very long, I'd feel a lot better knowing that she's with someone that loves her – and Cecily – just as much as I did."

He looked down at the jagged pieces of china at his feet as he felt his cheeks heat in shame over the ridiculous comparison. "I could never do what ya did."

The spectral hand reached out, and though it never actually touched him, he shivered, his skin crawling eerily as it hovered over his chest, the colorless eyes holding his with absolute honesty. "You already have."

"That were different."

"I don't happen to think so," Ernie pressed, then withdrew the hand, and Seamus rubbed unconsciously at the scar that now itched as if fresh. The curly head tilted, watching him, then the smile deepened, shadowing silver the dimple on his cheek. "But if nothing else, will you remind Susan of something for me?"

"Can't ya do it yourself?"

Ernie's eyes closed so tightly that if he had been mortal, Seamus would have thought he was fighting back tears as he shook his head. "For all that she misses me, she doesn't _actually _want to see me again. She's afraid I'll be angry at her for loving someone else. You weren't guarding against me. I'll still try, but…."

"'Course," he said, and it was so strange to be trying to comfort a dead man, but living or not, Ernie had been his friend, and it was unthinkable to deny him whatever help he wanted. "I'll tell her whatever ya want, mate."

The once-hazel eyes opened again, and what was in them was too many layers to separate, but plain and terrifying among them were love; deep, unconditional love, and a loss that was being accepted as more final than death alone had ever made it. "Tell her that she's not remembering all of the vows we made."

He had begun to fade now, but the silvery image was still clear enough that Seamus could see as Ernie pressed his fingers to his lips in the memory of a kiss. "As long as there was breath in my body."


	9. Scars Unseen

He hadn't known if she would believe him when she finally emerged into the kitchen again, but Ernie had chosen his message well. Seamus hadn't been there at the wedding, hadn't known the precise phrasing of their vows to one another, and the words had struck her with such force that he couldn't have felt more guilty if he had physically slapped her as he saw the sick, reeling shock and grief fall across her face, as she collapsed watery-kneed into the chair, hands clutched to her mouth.

She hadn't denied loving him, and oh, wrong though it might have been, he hadn't been able to stop the thrill of that, even when she had started to cry, even when she had begged him for time, to wait, to just leave things be for now. He'd agreed, both because he could never have forgiven himself for pushing for more just then, but also because she hadn't denied it. Because if he had waited over a year in despair, he could wait forever in the knowledge that she loved him too.

It might have been forever, might at least have been years, but the magic that kept out unwanted human visitors from the Glen had no sway over animals, and the night that had seemed like it would define everything had been completely forgotten when a pack of rogue werewolves had gotten in among the sheep. The carnage had been horrible, worse still that Duncan hurt his back, that Robbie was in Edinburgh on business, and it was left to Seamus and Susan alone to deal with it while Fiona kept Cecily safely away from the horrible mess.

Almost two dozen that had survived were bitten and had to be killed, but twice that many had been hurt when the flock had stampeded blindly in terror, and it was exhausting, draining work to round them all up again, to repair the walls and treat the injured, to get rid of the carcasses and bloody aftermath that would have called more predators down from the jagged tors. Yet for all that it was a nightmare, it was a dream and a relief all the same, because it kept them far too busy to wonder or worry about anything more abstract.

It wasn't until the third night that they finally had the last wounded animal bedded down safely in the barn's clean straw, and they had still been too keyed up on the potent cocktail of coffee and adrenaline to even attempt sleep, no matter how they both needed it. They had meant to just sit down for a few minutes, unwind a little, but minutes had turned into hours, and somewhere along the line, a bottle of the Macmillans' homemade cider had appeared, passed back and forth to go down so sweet and easy that one barely felt the potency of it.

For three and a half years, Seamus had lived there now, and after the initial awkwardness of the first few months, he and Susan had spoken every day, but it was astonishing to realize that they had never actually _talked. _There had always been so many other things – the farm, the Fund, Cecily – and then later, the specter of their own unspoken feelings, that their own lives had just never been of issue. Yet now that taboo seemed lifted, and he heard himself laughing and even crying a little, talking more and more freely than perhaps he ever had in his life, even though he would have never considered himself close-lipped in the least.

Susan's clothing was smeared in blood and dirt, speckled in straw and stained with sweat, her hair hanging in long strands that had pulled free of the thick plait, but her cheeks were flushed, her lips red and eyes bright, and she looked more vibrantly alive than he had ever seen her before. Usually, no matter how beautifully pulled-together or how worn out, she had the air of a porcelain doll, something fragile and not quite real, but she was nothing but a woman now, warm and heavy against his side as she turned the bottle thoughtfully in her surprisingly callused fingers.

"All we've talked about, all this…."She mused. "Ireland, England, Hufflepuff, Gryffindor, Hogwarts, Druim Cett, it's all that we're _different_, and we're ignoring it, ignoring the thing, the big thing, the thing that makes us _same."_

It should have made him tense, should have frightened him to come at last to what he knew she must mean, but he had discovered that several years wholly sober had blunted his once-terrifying capacity for drink, and he felt enough of a lazy blur to things that he barely raised an eyebrow as he looked over at her. "That we've wound up lovin' each other?"

She shook her head, her smile twisting into something darker than he had expected. "That we're liars, both of us."

"What d'ya mean by that?" Now he did sit up, turning to frown at her in disbelief. "You're one o' the most honest women I've –"

"I am not! And you're no honest man, Mr. Finnigan!" Susan let out a harsh little bark of a laugh, putting down the bottle to gesture at both of them. "We're liars, we lie to the whole world about what we really are."

The bitter smile was on his own mouth now as well, and he nodded ruefully, then shrugged. "I don't reckon anyone'd listen or care if a convict goes confessin' his sins, but I've said fair to ya tonight even that I'm a coward when comes to."

"There!" She jabbed a finger at him triumphantly. "Just like I said! You're a liar, Seamus…you want people to believe, and maybe you believe – and that makes me sad – that you're this awful, dangerous person, but you're _not_."

He didn't know how to respond, but she didn't seem to want a response, dropping back now to lie on her back and stare almost wistfully at the ceiling as she went on, her words no longer flung at him, but bled unflinchingly into the chill February night. "You're the best one of us, I think sometimes, because you don't hide it, you just do what you think is right for the world and damned what it means for you. Dangerous…." She made a small, dismissive snort. "Hell, Neville's a hundred times more dangerous than you, because he can turn off his heart. I've seen him do it. Shut it out and just do things but you _feel_ everything, and that's so brave, it really is. Not one person in a million has the guts to feel their own life and just be what they are."

Seamus laughed, dropping down beside her, then rolling to prop himself on one elbow so that he could meet her eyes. "If I had that kinda courage, I'da told ya I loved ya without waitin' for a ghost t'give me say-so two weekends ago."

"I knew you loved me," She fired back quickly. "I'm the one that stopped that, I did everything but put _Silencio _on you every way I could, I know damned well. Made you think it'd ruin everything just because it'd ruin my lies."

He took a deep breath, not sure why he hadn't been prepared for her to say that when he supposed he'd known all along it was true. "And what're those, now?"

She didn't answer at once, and as she scrambled to her feet, he thought at first that maybe the look on her face was the cider, that she was trying to get to a far corner of the barn to be sick, but she had only taken a few steps away from him before she spun back, and the twisted expression wasn't nausea, but a self-hatred that nearly rose the bile in his own throat to see. "I'm the sweet, tragic, noble widow." She pursed her lips, fluttering her long eyelashes in exaggeratedly sugar-sweet innocence. "The wonderful philanthropist, helping all her friends out of the goodness of her heart!"

The sweetly simpering mockery vanished, and she snatched the bottle up again, taking a deep pull that he recognized as a brace against what was to come, then tossing it back to him as she wiped her mouth on her sleeve in a deliberately crass motion, her dark eyes defying him to say anything. "I don't do it because it just barely makes the guilt bearable that I got myself knocked up and didn't fight with them. I don't make excuses to the Sheltons when I'm invited to their daughter's wedding because I _hate_ that little bitch for getting caught in a staircase when she was twelve years old and I'm the one who decided to go back in the first place. I don't go up that hill and scream at the grave of a man who loved me because he saved my life but he left me seventeen and scared and pregnant and not ready for any of it. And I don't –"

She had begun to pace, but now she stopped, dropping to her knees again not just in front of him, but straddling his legs, and she leaned forward until he could smell the dusky scent of apples on her breath, her eyes burning into his as she ran a single finger to burn like a brand along his throat at the edge of his collar, her voice low. "I absolutely don't look at the man that I've taken in to show him that there are good and pure and wholesome ways to live his life, who takes such good care of my daughter and has never tried to lay a hand on me and think about just how far those tattoos go down his body and wonder if the skin with ink on it tastes different from the rest."

"Too bad, that is," Seamus made no effort to hide the desire in his voice, but he forced himself to hold perfectly still beneath her, knowing that she was drunk, knowing that there was less room for error now than perhaps there ever had been, and that although he wasn't quite smashed himself, he certainly couldn't trust his own judgment. "Because I think I'd love ya all the more if ya did."

"Why?" The laugh was soft, throaty, only an inch away from his mouth. "Because you think you deserve a nasty, vengeful, horny, two-faced bitch?"

"'Cause I don't care if ya think we're both liars." His hand brushed through her hair, dropping free another thick tendril to shadow one eye. "I ain't no saint and neither are ya, and I'm glad there's dark to ya, Sue, 'cause that means we don't need fear hidin' our scars for scarin' the other if's we both have them."

Her eyes held his, then dropped, and she seemed to melt against him, half-lying, half-kneeling with her head ducked against his chest, her arms wrapped around herself in comfort against her own confession as his circled to draw her in, and what was wrong with him that she was hurting, that she was shaking and yet it was so much a kind of heaven to be holding her like this?

"I don't have any scars," she whispered. "I never fought…I just _let _everything happen. I didn't fight for Ernie when I loved him for years. I didn't bother with protection once we were married because I had this stupid little-girl idea that a baby wouldn't happen unless we wanted it because married people decide to have children and only bad girls who do it before get pregnant by accident. I let him pull me from the DA. I let him send me away when it was time to fight. I let him die for me."

"Ya didn't _let _him, Sue." He pulled the band from her hair, combing his fingers through the plait to let it fall free over her back, over his hands, stroking and soothing as the shivers became sobs. "Ya didn't have a choice in it…I were more there than ya were."

Her fingers twisted in his shirt, her knees drawing up to curl onto his lap fully now, and it felt so good, so right that he could encircle her completely, feel like he was shielding her from all the world even when it was the merciless past that wracked her slender body. "It wasn't supposed to be that way! Not like that! Everyone says it's so beautiful and tragic and romantic! Like I should be happy about it! Like I should be _proud_, but it just hurts so _bad_, Seamus, because he should have made it! He was strong enough and brave enough and he'd made it through, he'd already made it through and I killed him! I _killed _him, and oh, Merlin, how can he want me to live and go on and love and _have _when I _killed _him!?"

The answer came before he even thought about it, murmured against her cheek on the taste of salt and cider and hands that had already begun to slip beneath clothing as if their bodies had given up on the foolish minds and hearts that theoretically should have held them in check. "'Cause sometimes even murderers deserve a second chance."


	10. Keeping Secrets

"Good morning…or good afternoon, I should say." The sudden cold draft hit him like a bucket of ice water, and Seamus sat straight up with a gasp, blinking in the bright winter sunlight that nearly blinded him. It took a moment to place the voice, to match it to the backlit outline of the matronly figure standing with her arms crossed and her head tilted in amusement in the barn door, but it finally came to him at the exact moment that he realized something else.

He was naked. Completely naked, and the warm something that had been pressing against his right side and was now scrabbling upright beside him was Susan. Who was also naked.

Seamus felt his face blanch to what must have been an alarming white as he looked around quickly, snatching at the first piece of clothing he could find without even bothering to see what or whose it was. "Fiona!"

She stepped inside, closing the door behind her with a chuckle as she watched the two of them hurrying futilely to cover themselves, as if it could hope to conceal what had obviously taken place. "Oh, nothing I havenae seen 'afore, but glad I didnae send tha lass come after ye. Take it ye had a fine night?"

"I…I…I'm so sorry!" Susan sputtered, her eyes so wide that the deep brown was completely ringed in white. "I…we...."

"Just put yer clothes on and git up tae the house, and I'll nae say a word tae Duncan." To his great relief, Fiona did not seem in the least angry at them, or even surprised, for that matter, but his heart was still pounding as he searched the straw for his shorts. How…never mind. He remembered them coming off, that much was for certain, and what had happened immediately thereafter he _definitely _remembered, so how they had wound up on the pitchfork was entirely irrelevant. Fiona noticed where his gaze had fallen and laughed, plucking them down and tossing them to him. "There. Ye can give Susan her skirt back, now, 'less ye think ye need go Scots of a sudden."

"Thank ya, Fiona," Seamus squirmed into the garment quickly, then handed Susan back what he discovered now was indeed her skirt that he had first wrapped hastily around his hips. "I swear –"

"Nae a word more, laddie." Fiona shook her head fondly, returning to the door. "I'll be on. And Susan, dearie?"

"Yes?" Susan had managed to regain her composure quite impressively, but it was somewhat belied by the fact that her voice sounded as if someone had stepped on a Pygmy Puff.

"Knew ye had good taste. Nicest bum I've seen on a man since Duncan was in his glory days."

He had never considered himself someone who embarrassed easily, but Seamus knew that his face was flaming as she shut the door behind her, and he licked his lips, turning sheepishly to Susan. "So…er…now what?"

Her face was just as red, and her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, her eyes tracing his still half-naked body, the scattered straw, the empty bottle on the floor at their feet before she took a deep breath, drawing her shoulders back as her chin thrust out defiantly. "Well, I see three options for us, really. First: we pretend this never happened. We were drunk, we were tired, neither of us has gotten shagged in years, and thank Merlin Fiona is willing to let that be a possibility."

Seamus shook his head, offering her a sock that could have been either of theirs from the edge of the nearest stall as he bent to pull on his trousers. "Don't be likin' that one so much, I'll tell ya – is that me belt? - true. Sommat _did _happen, Sue, and while we may not've been – ya got a whole mess'a straw in your hair, there – sober's all that, we weren't flat ouva neither."

"All right." Susan sighed, and he knew she was as grateful as he for the excuse to avoid having to make actual eye contact just yet. "Number two: it _did _happen, but that doesn't mean we have to go leaping ahead of ourselves. Have you seen my bra? We accept that there's something between us, but we take it one step at a time without needing to make some kind of big announcement to the world."

"Likin' that better." He nodded. "Here 'tis. Want me grab ya a bit o' twine for your hair? Reckon our bands're hopeless gone. And three?"

"Yes, thank you. Three: we decide we've wasted enough time – this boot's yours – and we're a couple now and full steam ahead. Tell Cecily, tell the Macmillans, tell the DA – try to ignore how many bets get paid off – and damn the consequences."

"Much's there's a part o' me keen for that one – _Shite!" _ He jerked back from where he had knelt to grab his second boot, something pointy having jabbed him harshly in the kneecap and let off a fierce crack of sparks. "Found your wand, I did. I'm votin' for two and a half, meself."

"Lucky you didn't sit on it," She gave him a tentatively teasing smile as she took it, tucking it securely into the waistband of her skirt. "But I don't remember a two and a half."

"We tell Cecily and the Macmillans that we've feelin's for each other, and if we want to snog it ain't no earth-shatterin' deal, but we leave room 'nuff hopefully no one gets hurt too bad." He knotted the bit of twine to pull his hair back into a rough, hasty ponytail, then stopped, turning to face Susan directly. Nervous or not, this was too important to be behaving like flustered teenagers, and he placed both hands evenly on her shoulders, looking directly into her eyes with all the love, all the devotion he had ever felt for her open in his own.

Her hands had been busy with the buttons of her sweater, but they dropped away, first hovering uncertainly, then wrapping at his waist with an ease to the casual embrace that caught the breath in his throat more than anything they had done the night before. "I love ya, true enough I do," he said quietly, "but that ain't no guarantee o' nothin', and your daughter come first…I don't want no mess for her if't turns out we're better's friends." He tried to soften the words with a faint smile, feathering what wasn't quite a kiss over the edge of her lips. "No matter what that lovely mouth o' yours can do."

She kissed him back, not deeply, but there was something in it wonderfully deeper than passion alone. "I love you too, but you're right, and I think two and a half works beautifully."

His arms had slid from her shoulders to hold her more loosely against him, and he didn't want to let her go, not ever, but the sun was high and bright through the windows, and he made himself pull away, turning to take the heavy outer cloak that still hung on its hook as the only article of clothing sensibly abandoned. "What _about_ consequences, though? I ain't wantin' to put all ya've worked for with the Fund and all the good it's done our friends t'naught because the virtuous benefactor's beddin' a convict."

"That would be a disaster," she agreed, but he scarcely had time to wince before she was beside him, collecting her own cloak with a soft, hopeful smile. "But maybe not so much so if the proud young widow discovers the heart of gold in the wild Irish outlaw serving his debt to society on the lonely Highland moors?"

He laughed despite himself, shaking his head. "Ya make it sound like a bloody Fifi LaFolle novel!"

"Sally-Anne's a genius. She's actually had something ready for over a year."

Seamus raised an eyebrow curiously at her as he fastened the clasp at his throat. "She knew, then?"

"She worried," Susan shrugged lightly. "The two of us practically alone up here…she thought someone might try to start a rumor."

They were both fully dressed now, he knew it was time to get back to the farmhouse and tackle the work of a day already half-gone, but the barn was warm and quiet, and it felt like as long as they remained, all the worries of the world outside could stay safely nothing more than theory. She seemed no more eager to leave, and he reached out, caressing her cheek with the side of his hand. "I reckon that someone might be us."

"Might be."

She had turned her head to kiss his fingers, and he couldn't help himself, taking a step forward until they were only inches apart, the hand now cupping her face to draw her lips against his. "And if that wild Irish outlaw were to steal into the cold solitude o' your chaste bedchamber and lay devilish threat to your virtue again? Slip his rough fingers through your cascadin' raven tresses as your skin shines in the moonlight like the pearl-eddied swirls o' Amortentia?"

Susan laughed, pulling back to stare at him in mock horror. "Dear Merlin, don't tell me you've _read _those things!"

"I were an only child, love," he shrugged, giving her his cheekiest, most charming wink. "Only child o' a single Mam, and I spent an awful lot o' time in bed sick. She had loads o' them, she did. But ya tell another livin' soul, I don't reckon I'd have trouble getting' folk t'believe me denyin' it."

"Don't worry," the amusement was still there, but her voice had dropped to a low whisper, and she came forward again, and now it was her hand that traced the edge of his face, pushing back the strands of hair that had escaped his crude ponytail. "I'll keep your scandalous secret if you'll keep mine."

"What's that?"

"That the answer is; I'd like that very much."


	11. Point of No Return

"Trev, you already ate yours. That's Peggy's biscuit. Leave it alone!" Neville knelt down, reaching out with both arms to scoop up his twins in a fairly impressive bit of parental juggling. The wails of the two toddlers increased exponentially, now sharpened by their indignation over not being allowed to murder one another for the bit of chocolate biscuit still preserved in the little girl's chubby fist, but they were clutched securely under each arm now, and Neville shook his head as he stood. "Sorry about this, they're just way overtired…n-a-p-s should have been _hours _ago."

"Don't worry about it," Susan laughed gently, reaching towards Trevor in an offer to take the uselessly struggling child. "I'll put them down in the guest room."

"I've got it," Neville winced slightly as Peggy managed to twist enough to land a good kick to his back, but he didn't even need to shift his hold to keep them both secure as he headed for the stairs, his voice rising with mildly exasperated practice above the shrieks. "Really…it's kind of an art, and it'll be a lot easier for everyone if they just finish the n-a-p and I'm already g-o-n-e. Thanks again for doing this for us."

Seamus followed him up the stairs, Susan close behind, and he was careful to stay mostly out of range of flailing little fists and feet, stopping only a moment to pick up a shoe that Trevor had kicked off. "Your Gran and Mr. Abbott should be there; ain't no problem for us t'watch the little buggers for a while."

"It might be two or three days," Neville warned. "She's been having contractions for almost a whole day now, and if she doesn't start moving along, they're going to induce this evening, and then we don't know." He sighed, but there was a faintly panicky look in his eyes that made Seamus have to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning. "The twins were just completely different than this from the beginning."

"We'll keep them long's ya need." He patted his friend on the shoulder as Susan opened the door of the guest room, but Neville paused there, looking back down the hallway towards the stairs.

"They've got –"

"They've got 'nuff stuff for a _year_, Fearless Leader," Seamus assured him, unable to wholly suppress the chuckle this time. "You'd think Hermione'd packed ya."

For a moment, Neville looked rather offended, then he blushed, biting his lip as he shifted the finally-quieting children to be held against his shoulders rather than tucked under each arm, and in those few seconds, the sheepish smile seemed so much like the boy Seamus had shared his adolescence with that it was rather shocking against the scarred and hardened face. "She was involved, yes."

"No kidding," Susan said dryly, then leaned up to kiss Neville on the cheek, shooing him on through the door into the guest room. "You get going, though, and give our love to Hannah and the baby…go ahead and Apparate as soon as they're down; under the circumstances, we're hardly going to consider it rude. You'll send a Patronus the moment –"

"Absolutely," Neville nodded quickly. "And an owl right behind that with pictures. Thanks again."

They closed the door behind him, lingering a few moments to insure that their help wouldn't be needed further for the time being, then Seamus turned back to the stairs, shaking his head fondly as a loud cry of protest proved that at least one of the twins had figured out what their father had in store for them. "Don't know how he does it. Love her to death, I do, but still glad I missed the part o' her life where me _Banphrionsa_ were a bit more o' a Banshee. Ain't 'fraid t'say that babies scare the hell out o' me. Don't like them much."

Susan stopped at the bottom of the stairs, regarding him with an expression that looked more suited to a confession that he had always secretly wanted to be a Death Eater. "Honest?"

"Never known what you're 'sposed to _do _with them." He gave a good-natured but helpless shrug. "They just lay there and wail atcha."

Her eyes widened, and she actually took a step back. "You _really _don't like babies?"

"Don't mean I…." Seamus stopped, frowning. He knew that women had certain assumptions about men who liked young children or fluffy little animals, but her reaction was more than that kind of disappointment, and certainly more than made sense for someone whose daughter he had helped raise from the age of four. "Ya got a look on your face, Sue. Worryin' me. Ya ain't gettin' all itchy for 'nother one yourself just 'cause Fearless Leader can't keep his hands off his wife no two minutes, are ya?"

"Not exactly…oh, hell." She turned away, rubbing at her forehead, her voice so quiet that he didn't even know if she meant to be talking only to herself. "I wanted to talk to Hannah first, but I know what she'd say, and she's right, or she'd be right, anyway."

"Sue?"

"Seamus…." She took a deep breath, slowly coming around to face him again, and the look in her eyes was a kind of gravity he had never seen before, and which made him far more nervous than he had expected, sending a cool, fluttering sensation to the pit of his stomach. "We need to talk."

"What're we doin' now, then?" The attempt at levity failed miserably, and he knew it even before her frown deepened and she sat down on the bottom step, motioning him to sit beside her.

"I mean seriously talk. Because there's a problem, and I don't really have the right to just make the decisions about it alone." He was confused at first by the laden tone to her words, as if he were supposed to already know what the problem was, but then he saw the hand she had placed so deliberately over her lower belly, and it felt abruptly like the entire farm had run out of air.

"Ya are _not_ pregnant." She nodded wordlessly, and he heard himself let out a low moan, his elbows bracing on his knees as he dropped his head forward into his hands. "Oh, shite. That ain't possible! We've been so careful, we –"

"Yes," Susan interrupted firmly, "But we were idiots in the barn, and the second time, too."

"How sure are ya?"

"Two positive spells. And I'm like clockwork." Her lips curved into a weak smile. "The last time I was late more than a day was almost nine years ago, and her name is Cecily."

"Feck."

"That's the gist of how we got here, yes."

He drew a deep breath, forcing himself to sit up straight, shoulders pulled back as he met her eyes with all the matter-of-fact calm he could pull over the something that had started screaming in the back of his head. "So I don't see where there's a choice to be makin' at this point, I don't. We got ourselves a baby."

There was no question in her eyes that she could see right through his front, and how strange was it that even at a time like this, it made him want somehow to kiss her as she took his hand in both of hers. "Seamus, I love you, but while it's one thing to be in a relationship with you, it would be the death of the Fund and all it's doing for our friends to have what too many stuffy old witches and wizards would see as nothing but a bastard."

The cold practicality of her statement stung, but he ignored it, wrapping his other hand to clasp theirs tightly. "Then we get married, we do, and even those sorts don't make such a big deal 'bout countin' months too precise if nobody's too young. "

"That's very chivalrous, but I'm not going to ask you to get married just because we got carried away." Her head was held high, and there was a fragile defiance to every aching word that made him feel like he had failed her completely by letting himself fall into a few weeks of such careless happiness. "I _am_ a witch, I do have options to take care of things while it's still early."

Seamus' jaw set, and he shook his head, pulling his hands away to cross his arms tightly over his chest. He'd half expected it from what she had already said, but while he didn't think it was perhaps always murder like some he knew, having an abortion to spare an awkward situation was something he found beyond wrong. "If I've any say in it 'tall, I ain't gonna have no more blood on me hands, and that's what it'd be to me if's I told ya to end it just 'cause I've been too 'fraid to even think o' ever proposin' to ya."

"What about Cecily?" She replied hotly. "I don't want her to see us forced into marriage."

"I didn't say none o' that!" There was an edge of anger to his voice that surprised him. "I said I been 'fraid to say anythin', 'cause I've never thought could _be_. Havin' ya in me arms and in me bed now and again's near enough hard to believe. But marriage is for folk like Fearless Leader. I ain't got no right ask ya to make the likes o' me anythin' more than your lover."

To his surprise, she did not become defensive, nor even argue him. Instead, her face softened into a sad, loving smile, and she brushed her hand over his cheek in what at any other time he would have thought to be the prelude to a kiss. "Will you ever stop that, Seamus?"

"What?"

"Talking about yourself as if you're worthless. If nothing else, what are you saying about me? That I have no taste in men? That I'm slumming? That I couldn't get 'better'?" There was a coolly accusatory tone to the last, and he looked away, honestly never having considered it like that before and a bit nonplussed.

"'Course not!"

"Then why would you think you couldn't say anything?" she asked gently.

He hesitated a long time before replying, trying to wrap words that would make any kind of sense around the confusion that had swirled down onto their simple love affair as he twisted the end of his ponytail between his fingers. "Fine, 'tis, that ya think so much o' me. I sometimes even think I can almost see it meself, when ya believe it so much, and heaven knows I try to be half the man ya swear I am, but there's more to it. What about Cecily's inheritance? The Fund? That's _Ernie's _money, 'tis, and only yours for bein' his widow. Would the Macmillans still be wantin' us livin' here? What o' the rest o' me time? I've still more than eleven years, and then what? No offense, and I don't know what I _do _be wantin' do with meself, but I ain't gonna be growin' old as no shepherd, I ain't. Isn't _me_."

He didn't look up when he finished, and her voice held no clue what he would see if he did. "We're going to have to have a long talk with the Macmillans, obviously, and this isn't going to be easy or simple, no matter what we do."

"Well, endin' it ain't no choice for me," he spread his hands, then let them drop heavily onto his thighs with a dark chuckle. "Though I can't be stoppin' ya."

"Then it's just whether we get married, or whether we play the game of compromise and hide it as long as we can, then find an excuse to keep me on the farm and out of sight when I get too big."

Now he did look up, raising one eyebrow skeptically at her. "And the baby? Are we 'sposed to have found it floatin' in the Loch?"

Her cheeks were pale, but her eyes had that steely distance he hadn't seen directed at him in longer than he'd realized; the businesswoman's necessarily heartlessly practical shell. "I would abruptly be able to find someone willing to let Sinead adopt that baby she's been trying to get for so long."

Seamus actually considered the idea for a few seconds, then jerked his hand up the stairs and towards Cecily's room. "Little girls got big mouths."

"It's a risk we'd have to take," she admitted.

It was ridiculous to feel like he had been rejected for something he had never intended to ask, but he couldn't entirely hide the disappointment he suddenly felt. "Then ya don't want to marry me."

"I didn't say that." Susan stopped, her eyes closing as her head slumped, and er voice was nearly girlish, though she looked somehow far older than her twenty-six years. I just…I don't want to get my hopes up, Seamus. We can't put ourselves before almost thirty people who rely on me for so much."

"Could ya forgive me if I said my hopes were already up?" He confessed hesitantly, cupping her chin to turn her face to his so she could see the sincerity there. "And if I'll be prayin' we can find a way to make it work with Duncan and Fiona?"

It was no surprise that there were tears in her eyes, but he was still startled when she lunged forward, kissing him with a hard, desperate passion before she finally drew back, her voice barely a whisper but an iron demand nonetheless. "You swear!"

"Huh?"

"Look me in the eyes, Seamus Finnigan, and you swear to me, swear on whatever it was that you held deep enough to tear apart time and death!" She was trembling, the tears thick on her cheeks over the words that never wavered. "Swear that it's _me_ you want, not just doing the right thing, not because you feel trapped here or trapped with this pregnancy or trapped with me, because so help me, the only thing worse than losing another husband would be killing one, and I know what a cage does to you!"

There was no delay to his answer, there didn't need to be, and he wrapped her hands in his in a hold so tight that she should have flinched but didn't, his eyes locked hard on hers. "I swear to ya, Susan. No matter what happens, ya ain't never been me cage, and ya couldn't be."

For all that people had told him he was brave, he had never felt it as much as he did now, but he let himself continue, knowing that he was taking an irrevocable step into a life he had never planned, but knowing all the same that it was right, knowing with a certainty that made his heart beat with more terror than the choice itself. "You're the sunshine 'tween the bars, and maybe I'm scared t'death for a thousand reasons, but ain't none o' them's the thought o' havin' ya mine for the rest o' me life." He paused, and she frowned to see the mischievous smile that had come over his mouth. "But I swear't only on one condition, I do."

"What's that?"

"Ya name it Severus, Alecto, or Amycus, and I'm walkin'; parole or no."

He had said it with the utmost gravity, but it was beautiful to hear her laugh, to see her wipe at her cheek with her sleeve and smile at him in what was love even as much as hope or relief. "I promise."

"Then I'm yours." Seamus kissed her; slowly and deeply, allowing his hand to slip down the line of her body and rest determinedly against her flat stomach as he whispered the oath against the softness of her lips. "Yours, and both o' your children's. Forever. I swear."


	12. Best Laid Plans

"Well, we're just goin' to have to make the fences higher, won't we?" Seamus shrugged in frustration as he unclasped his cloak, not bothering to hang it on the hook inside the door, even though he knew that he would be lucky to make it ten minutes before one of the witches made him retrieve the crumpled heap of fabric.

Robbie shook his head, dropping his own cloak next to Seamus' as he bent to unlace his mud-spattered boots. "They were your idea, ye need tae solve it."

"Aye, because all I know about any kind o' bleatin' bugger's done come from ya and yours, it has," he pointed out caustically. "Ya want my view o' it, I say that we hex the wee buggers' legs off, since it's the middle o' them what's got the hair any –" He stopped in mid-sentence, the long hours spent trying to solve the disdain of goats for fences abruptly forgotten. Susan was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, and she hadn't seemed to even notice that they had come in, much less where they had put their cloaks, her head cradled in both hands as her shoulders shook with what looked distressingly like soundless sobs.

One boot still half-on but unlaced, he dropped the other – from the squawk behind him, possibly on Robbie's foot, scarce that it mattered – and hurried to her side, frowning as he wrapped an arm carefully around her shoulders. "Sue, love, what's goin' on? Somethin' happen, did it?"

The words were muffled against her hands, but his frown deepened, and he was certain he must have mis-heard. "Me mother? What could me mother have to do with aught?"

Now her head did lift, and he could see that her eyes were pink and swollen as if she had been crying for quite a while, her fair cheeks deeply flushed. "Your mother, my mother, Ernie's mother!" The words were spat somewhere between a helpless sob and a furious rebuke. "Maybe they've brought in a few more, I don't know, and I guess it doesn't really matter, does it?"

Seamus blinked, confused, even as he tried his best to look sympathetic to whatever had so clearly upset her. "Me Mam's in Belfast, Sue, and yours on t'south coast, ain't she?"

"They arrived this afternoon." Susan wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, and her mouth twisted bitterly into the shadow of a smile. "They have a wedding to plan, it seems."

"I thought we –"

The smile broke into a dark chuckle. "You silly, naïve little boy."

Of all the things he had been called in his life, and all the things she could have called him, naïve was the last he had ever expected, and he felt his brows lift in a look too surprised to be properly offended. "Am I, now?"

"Thinking this is _our _wedding," she raised one hand, ticking off the points on her fingers. "They have to decide who's invited, what kind of dress I should wear considering my _delicate condition_, how they're going to make you look presentable – you'll need a haircut, of course, and there must be _some _kind of spell to do something about those tattoos – and your mother wants a priest, but Fiona has her heart set on a proper Scottish wedding, and _my _mother –"

"That's a load o' shite," Seamus snapped fiercely, gesturing to the side of his face. "Part o' who I am, these are, and if they ain't likin' that, they've bigger problems than how it'll look. And ya can tell Fiona I ain't gettin' married in no skirt."

"Kilt," Susan corrected him automatically.

"_Skirt,_" he repeated firmly. "Kilts are for Scots, and I ain't no Scot, and neither's ya." He took a deep breath, swallowing the temper that had been rising almost too hotly for him to catch. "Grateful enough I am to them, but ain't nothin' goin' to be bringin' Ernie back, and wouldn't be _right _to try and have us the weddin' they wanted for their son."

He reached out, wrapping her hand in both of his to look deeply into her eyes. "We're both more than grown, Sue. Closer we are to the years what start with thirty than the ones what end in teen, and I ain't lyin' to say I'm a bit surprised ya let yourself get run o'er."

"It's just…." Susan trailed off, sighing, then shook her head quietly, and her voice was low and a little rough when she spoke again. "You don't understand what it's like, I guess. They all love us, Seamus, they really do, and they just want what's best, and my mother especially, she can make me feel like I'm still five years old – she has this _tone_, and oh, she's so disappointed in me that I'm in trouble like this…and I already let her down so badly eloping with Ernie, I _owe _her, and I owe Fiona so much, and there's no question where you get your stubbornness from when it comes to Kate…." She smiled weakly, clearly ashamed of herself as she shrugged. "It's stupid, I know. I'm sorry. It's just a wedding."

"No need for ya bein' sorry." He shifted closer on the stairs until their bodies were touching, pulling her into his arms so that his hands rested on her belly where it was just beginning to curve beneath his touch. Even through the indignation he felt on her behalf and the determination to find a solution for this mess, he still felt a sense of wonder that it was his child there, that he was going to be a husband and a _father_, the prospect at once astonishing and more than a little intimidating.

"Parents…ah, Sue…." His soft laugh ruffled her hair as she rested her head back against his shoulder, and he shifted slightly to still meet her eyes. "Ain't no shame to feelin' as ya are – heaven knows me Mam can still give me a look make me feel not more'n a kid meself – but it ain't just blind obedience we're owin' them, ya know. That's much disservice to them's as writin' them flat out, 'tis. Hard as 'tis for them to admit that we ain't their little ones no more, maybe we need be showin' them they're wrong."

An odd expression, something balanced between hope and bafflement, creased the skin at her large, dark eyes. "I don't understand."

"Screwed up good, we both have," Seamus admitted bluntly. "Much as ya loved him, and dear as Cecily is to all o' us, we both know ya rushed into things with Ernie, and it'd take longer than we have in this life to be listin' me sins, but we've _changed_, Sue. Life's gone on." His voice fell to a whisper, and it was strange to be saying this out loud, giving unflinching spoken reality to things that he had been half afraid to even think to himself for fear that they would vanish into fantasy. "Ya ain't no lovestruck girl; you're a woman what's chosen a man she loves in plenty o' time and consideration, even if we've gotten goin' with the family a bit sooner'd we'd o' planned, and I ain't no lit fuse challengin' the world to a duel with each breath, I ain't. We've hurt them so with what we did before, maybe we owe them seein' they raised us right after all."

Susan seemed to consider his words for a long moment, then shook her head ruefully. "That's just all the more reason we owe it to them to let them do this."

"We owe it to them to let them see _we _can do it," he pressed. His fingers brushed a loose tendril of hair from her eyes, and he kissed her forehead gently, offering what he hoped was a smile that held even a fraction of how much he really had come to love her. "Now, weren't ya tellin' me this mornin' ya'd found a dress ya liked?"

"Yes…," she admitted, then made a face, touching her stomach. "But they're right, it would show that –"

"And anyone who'd give ya hell for't ain't invited," Seamus retorted insistently. "Do ya like it?"

Another long pause, her fingers tracing the changing lines of her body through the folds of the robes, then her head lifted again, and he felt himself smile to see the familiar spark and strength returned to her eyes. "Yes, I do," she said firmly. "It's a beautiful dress, and it's what I want to wear, and I _specifically _thought that the bit of blue at the neckline would set off your eyes…_and _your tattoos, which I've said before, I happen to think are sexy."

"Then that's settled." He kissed her again, but she put her hand on his chest between them, pushing him away with a skeptically raised eyebrow.

"You talk like they're just going to roll over and accept it."

"Roll over, no." Seamus' smile widened, and the spark of almost mischievous defiance in his voice felt better than he knew it probably should have if he really was supposed to have settled down so much. "But I'm goin' in there, and I'm goin' to be layin' down a bit o' the how and why o' it…and I can be fair persuasive, I can, love."

Susan giggled fondly, wagging a finger at him. "That I know, but you're not exactly able to use the same kinds of charms on them that you do on me, and I think some of your other methods of 'persuasion' might be a little extreme."

He gave her his most innocent look, his eyes wide and guileless in mock astonishment. "Why, I'd never dream o' it!" The innocence turned downright wicked now, and he stood, offering her a deep, sweeping bow. "But I've more than one kind o' a gifted tongue when need be, I do, and so's promise you'll be gettin' your dress and I'll be gettin' trousers and _I'll _be the one decidin' how this weddin' goes, so I will, though their opinions'll still be welcome plenty."

She laughed again, more freely now, and she stood to drape her arms over his shoulders, her mouth an inch from his, and it was difficult to even remember that there was anyone else in the world, much less the other room when she looked at him like that. "_You'll _be deciding?" she teased softly, her breath warm on his lips. "And what, exactly, will _you _be deciding?"

"Let's just say it'll be same thing's any other man what knows his rights and ain't one for lettin' himself be no pawn in no game, and who reckons they need know who's in charge in this business." Somehow, he managed to keep his tone utterly serious, even as he heard his voice deepen, felt his pulse quicken against her touch, and it was an act of supreme will power to pull away and brush nothing more than the tips of her fingers against his mouth.

He left her there at the foot of the stairs as he crossed the hall, then turned back with one hand on the handle of the sitting room door, tossing an unashamedly cheeky grin over his shoulder. "I'm decidin' that they'll be doin' whatever me wife wants."


	13. Tomorrow Comes A Day Too Soon

"Calm down, mate, I can see the vein in your temple right through the rest of the fancy lines you've got going there." Zacharias reached a hand out, trying to place it comfortingly on Seamus' shoulder, but it was shrugged off as he wheeled to pace another pass of the room.

"How'm I supposed to calm down when I can't be there for me own child's birth? Feckin' Ministry! What do they think I'm goin' to do, go after the Healers with me knife?!" He stopped at last, his hands gripping the stone windowsill in white-knuckled frustration as he scoured the dark, snowy landscape beyond as if he could see all the way to St. Mungo's by pure force of will. Part of him wished he hadn't ordered Fearless Leader to go with his wife to hospital, but if he couldn't be there himself, there was no man living he trusted more, and Neville had sworn that if anything actually went wrong, he would _find _a way to get some form of temporary parole. So really, it was good that he was still stuck at the Loch.

Wasn't it?

"It's not all it's made out to be, to tell you the truth." Seamus could see Zach approach again out of the corner of his eye, and his scowl deepened as he saw what the other wizard held towards him.

"I ain't –"

"I'm an Auror, remember? I know the conditions of your sentence as well as anyone, and I personally think if there's a time a man needs a dram, this would be it. It's not like you could keep it hidden if you were still drinking like you used to." He swirled the amber-colored whiskey in the bottom of the small glass, then shrugged. "Besides, it's an open secret you're allowed to use a wand often enough, and you've never abused that."

Seamus took the drink with a grateful half-smile, but his hand froze halfway to his lips, and he stared down into the liquid hesitantly, his eyes lifting to those of the man he had slowly come to call friend; his fellow black sheep and lost soul forgiven among the DA's long roster of abandoned. "Did ya wonder, Zach?"

"I've wondered a lot of things," Zach chuckled thinly, leaning one long arm against the window above Seamus' shoulder, not meeting his eyes, but gazing out with him to the vague, rolling shapes of the mountains. "But I'm willing to bet that you're talking about when Neville was born, about if I was ready."

"That'd be 'bout the size o' it, yeah," Seamus agreed quietly. "Ready…or worth it."

"Considering that Meg and I were married almost at wandpoint by her father when he found out I'd put her up the duff over spring break, and considering that she was in labor before she'd _speak _to me after what I'd done with the D.A., I have _absolutely _wondered." It was said with the ease of looking back from the healed side of a wound, but there was still the faint ache beneath his words that held them apart from platitudes, and Seamus saw the reflection of his own humorless smile in the glass.

"Except ya were right, ya were," he admitted heavily. "Fools and children, not understandin' half o' what we were doin' and throwin' our lives away on a song we didn't know the words to."

Zach shook his head, the regrets shadowing the brown eyes so strongly that it seemed to deepen the few lines twenty-eight years had already etched into their corners. "You were brave and strong and you fought like demons that night. I wish I could have been with you."

"Wishes are shite, Zach." Seamus let out a harsh little huff of a sigh, gesturing with the glass. "We knows this, we do. And the demons…ah, but that were later for me." His voice dropped again, and he stepped away from the window, crossing to sit on the couch with his elbows braced on his knees, the drink still untouched as he stared into the fireplace that still flickered the steady oranges and golds of no news yet. "And that's what I'm so afraid o', 'tis."

"You're not going to hurt the baby, Seamus." The other man joined him, and Seamus felt a moment's flicker of annoyance as he gave a borderline patronizing smile that came too close to making light of the fear he apparently hadn't understood in the first place. "I've seen you with Cecily, and you were never _that _far gone. I don't think you'd have ever laid a finger on an innocent."

"Not that, no," he corrected quickly, then sighed again. "But what _do_ ya tell your boy, mate? Nearly nine, he's got be old enough to be askin' what ya did, where ya were when all's we fought. How do ya tell him ya left, and oh, love o' mercy…." He heard his voice crack, but he didn't care as he set the drink down on the low table, dropping his head heavily into his hands. "How do I ever, _ever_ tell me little one the tenth o' what I done?"

There was a long pause, he heard the rustle of movement beside him, and he felt more than saw as Zach shifted closer to mirror his own curled posture and look as much towards the cupped face as possible. "You don't. Not at first, at least…not for a while. But you don't lie, either. You…well…." He paused uncomfortably, then took a deep breath, letting the rest out in an uncertain rush. "I've just said that sometimes people make mistakes, that I've made mistakes, and he will someday, but we just have to do what we think is best from moment to moment. Just do the best we can."

"To err is human, and ain't we both that enough."

"Truer words, Finnigan. Truer words."

Another silence, so heavy that it seemed to deaden the snapping flames and the keen of the wind outside, and at last Zach conjured a second glass, tossing it back himself as he leaned into the couch cushions with exaggerated insouchance. "So," he said brightly. "Any time now, we'll have a new addition to the junior D.A! This is exciting business! Have you chosen a name?"

"Me mother's flat sure it's a boy, and Fiona too," Seamus answered flatly. "So we're goin' for Thomas Icarus. Deanna if it's a girl anyway, but still fussin' o'er a middle name there. Probably Lucy after her Mam. Name's Lucinda, but 'tis too posh for me."

"Good name…they were good men." It was a little bit stilted, but the sentiment behind it was true enough, and Seamus nodded solemnly in return.

"Gave their lives for me, the both o' them. Least I could do's remember them when I finally get to bring a life into the world after I've done taken so many."

The dark reply wasn't helping Zach's efforts to lighten the mood, and Seamus almost felt sorry for him, though not enough to force any false enthusiasm he couldn't have felt further from. It didn't even make sense; he'd been excited for months now, only last night lying in bed with Susan and playing with the baby, making her laugh as he outlined the little foot so clearly through the taut skin of her round belly, chattering away about how strong, how active the baby already was to anyone who would listen or not. Bragging, to his wife's chagrin, about how big she had gotten, and thinking almost constantly about what it would be like to be a father.

Now, it was like he'd never thought about it at all. The spectre of his own father prickled his skin, and he shivered. Would he ever abandon his child? So easy to say no, never, impossible, but was it really? His mother had always said how alike they were; he knew he looked like Patrick, had his temper, his passion. Maybe it wasn't about her secret at all, maybe it had just been too much, too difficult, too intimidating and impossible to have responsibility for a child at once so sickly and so headstrong as he had been. In the same situation, could he honestly swear he'd have done better? That he _would _do better?

"Have you told Dean's family? I'm sure they'd be honored to know." Zach's question startled him, and Seamus' head snapped up, blinking in confusion as the ghostly images of the fire danced for a few seconds in his eyes across his friend's gently curious expression.

"Huh?"

"Dean's family," Zach repeated. "Have you told them you're naming the baby after him?"

"Oh, aye," he agreed quickly, feeling like more than half an idiot for getting lost in himself. "And thanked me for it too, they did." Seamus smiled in sharply self-aware irony. "Ya'd think it weren't me what took him in t'first place."

"Meg says he fell at the doors," Zach frowned bemusedly. "I don't see how –" He cut himself off, his eyes narrowing shrewdly with the practiced perceptiveness of an Auror. "What really happened, then?"

He thought at first about not answering, about allowing the easy lie or the witty misdirection, but somehow it seemed as if ducking his sins tonight would be wrong in a way that went beyond superstition, and he closed his eyes instead, sagging back into the couch with his arms loose and spread across the back, face tipped to the ceiling as though abandoning himself to a literal dream rather than a nightmare memory.

Seamus didn't think often about that night, because when he did, it was too easy to remember too much. The grit on your lips, the adrenaline in your throat, the tears on your cheeks that came without you ever having stopped to cry, the bang and crash of spells in your ears so loudly that you were left half-deaf but screams could still cut through, and being so tired that it could circle around and thrill you with a manic strength…

From far away, he could feel his lips moving, but what he heard was a voice that seemed too old and too thickly brogued for the boy whose memories it told. "It were just him and Ernie left, and fightin' like ya wouldn't believe, but it were less fair than most o' the battles that night, and they were both clear hurt. Ernie'd had his hand torn half off, and Dean were bleedin' so many places ya couldn't even tell where from, and I tried to join them, tried to help, but it's me fault, 'tis. Not that I didn't get there in time, but that I didn't get there 'tall. Didn't watch me back, and next thing I knew, I were flat on me face with me shirt goin' up like me own pyre. Hurt like…ah, nothin' like burnin', there ain't. And not a thing I could think to do, just –"

"Are you telling me that you've been beating yourself up for years because you couldn't help Dean when you were on _fire?" _ Zach's disbelieving exclamation cut him off, and he shrugged half-heartedly as he continued.

"He come to me, he did. Put it out, numbed it down, got me to me feet…and then…. He took it for me, Zach." His hands were shaking, and he fisted them hard, pushing away the tears he did not want. "Before I could say a word o' thanks or apology for the things I'd said 'afore, there were a flash o' green, he shoved me down, and…he were gone. Just like that."

"_Shit." _

"Aye."

"I'm…sorry."

Seamus opened his eyes, turning his head to arch a thin smile onto his lips at the gentle sympathy that meant nothing and did less. "'Tis past."

"Is it?"

"Ten years come spring."

"But it's not past for you," Zach pressed softly, "and Seamus, it's _got_ to be now. You've got to let it go…kids, they can tell if you hate yourself. I _know_." There was so much more beyond the simple words in the last, and Seamus sat up again, studying the other wizard's expression that was too layered to truly read, but in which lay not so much guilt as the remembrance of something that seemed impossible: guilt forgiven.

"How d'ya do it?" He asked at last. "The ghosts…they don't ever just leave ya."

"You become more than one night…one choice…even a hundred choices," Zach said quietly, but there was a striking intensity to it nonetheless. "You ask yourself what you _want _your son to see when he looks at you, and you make yourself that man. Give him the Lieutenant who led Gryffindor, the man who stood up to another evil when it was just rumors –"

"-- Studied under Cuchulainn and gave meself for me friends," Seamus interrupted with a sing-song bitterness, waving one hand dismissively against what he had begun to hope would be something new. "Heard it all from Sue, I have."

"Have you listened?"

"Half an ear, maybe," He picked up the glass from the table again, turning it in his fingers, not sure why he still hadn't drank it when it looked so inviting. "It's more…'tis hard to leave the past when I ain't no future for another ten years."

"And if you were paroled tomorrow?" The question annoyed him, and he shot a frustrated glare at Zach out of the corner of his eye.

"I'd go to St. Mungo's and see me baby and me wife, whaddya think I'd do?" he snapped. "Run away t'Jamaica?"

Zach folded his arms stubbornly. "You know what I mean."

He did, it was true, but he didn't want to play games, and he ignored it. "Don't matter."

"Seamus…." It was a warning, that same tone that Susan got sometimes – was it a Hufflepuff thing? – that said this would not be let go, and he scowled, slamming the glass down so hard that some of the whiskey leapt up over the edge.

"Fine! I'd take Sue and Cecily and the baby and get as far from Scotland, far from Ireland, far from anywhere what's ever been full o' blood and graves t'me as I could!" He'd never actually admitted it before, even to himself, not wanting to seem ungrateful to the people who were at once hosts and family and jailers, but now that he'd started, he couldn't seem to stop.

"I'd take me family down t'south coast where she's from – no more bloody tors – or maybe farther. Maybe outa t'UK altogether, and we'd do all's we've ever known, but 'tis what we're damned good at! Folk want us to be ordinary people now, t'repent o' wantin' more like repentin' o' murder, but I ain't ordinary, and neither's she, and ain't no shame should be that! We'd seek us out the lonely and the unloved and the abandoned what ain't got no champions and no caretakers, and we'd see what we could o' this damned world right; one inch, one child, one broken heart at a time. That's what I'd do, that's me dream, but scarce it matters when I'm still payin' for what I's supposed to leave behind me!" He had started shouting at some point, and when he finally stopped, breathing hard, it was impossible to tell which of them was more startled.

Slowly, Zach licked his lips, trying his best to look like the outburst had been perfectly rational. "Well…that's…I mean…it's not what I expected, but that's…." Seamus braced himself, ready to hear that it was irrational, impossible, irresponsible, but not ready at all to see respect or hear what sounded ridiculously like admiration in his friend's tone. "I think that's the dream of a man who has nothing to be ashamed of when he looks at his son."

He had been ready to defend himself, and he was caught off-guard, shaking his head in awkward dismissal as he retrieved the drink as an excuse for something to do with his hands and somewhere else to point his eyes. "Just a dream, though."

"If there are two people with more raw willpower than you and Susan who could make it more," Zach replied bluntly, "I don't know who they'd be. That's a fine dream, and whether or not it comes true, I think you'll make a fine father."

"And what if I can't?" Seamus challenged. "Cecily were already a girl when I met her. I know shite about babies, I were an only child, I –"

"Love him," Zach suggested simply. "Love him and –"

"Love him already so much it hurts, I do!" He spread his hands, hiding nothing now, if ever he had. "'Tis why I's so scared. I've held the fate o' me whole people in me fist, but I feels like I ain't never had nothin' so important as this one wee baby."

"You haven't, and you never will." The hand on his shoulder felt solid in a way that he wasn't used to, and Seamus felt himself wondering madly if this was what it would have been like if Patrick had stayed, and if it was possible to receive paternal advice from someone less than a year your senior, even if he had five children of his own and you technically might or might not have one yet.

But paternal or not, it felt safe and real and honest, and it was easy to listen in a way that surprised him when advice of any kind usually burned so fiercely against his pride as Zach went on. "Even when you have more, you'll love them the same, but it won't be like the first. Everything's different now. The moment they bring that baby through those doors, what you were before doesn't matter, and you're going to have to decide what you really love more: your past or his future."

He said nothing for he didn't know how long, and he was relieved that Zach didn't press the point, didn't seem offended when he shrugged off the hand and took his drink back to the window. In the distance, he could see the hill where the Macmillans had their family graveyard, and he raised the glass, holding it up to the ghosts that lay so far beyond the headstones, to the monument on the grounds of the bloodied school, to the back alleys and dark forests of his own distant homeland, and to one small plot of earth in a Muggle churchyard in Cornwall where so many hours of his childhood lay.

"_Slan a mo cairde chroi._"

It was over, and maybe, finally, it had begun.

THE END


End file.
